CubeSats could soon have on-board propulsion

CubeSats – small, low-cost satellites – could soon become self-propelled, thanks to a rocket-motor concept developed by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US. While CubeSats are a cheap and easy way for relatively small research groups to launch satellites and access space, they traditionally do not have any on-board propulsion system – the nanosatellites are usually launched via a larger satellite and simply released into a specific orbit. "The National Academy of Sciences recently convened a meeting to look at science missions in CubeSats," says Bryce Tappan, lead researcher of the CubeSat Propulsion Concept team, "and identified propulsion as one of the primary categories of technology that needs to be developed."