CU Aerospace

Champaign-Urbana Aerospace, known as CU Aerospace or CUA, is a privately owned company in Champaign, Illinois. The site says its 10,000 square foot headquarters is where its technologies are developed and made. The company builds propulsion systems, plasma systems and space hardware, and it offers engineering services.

The propulsion products include MPUC, a monopropellant propulsion unit for CubeSats, and CHIPS, a CubeSat high impulse propulsion system. The site also lists fiber fed pulsed plasma thrusters, a quick turn pulsed plasma thruster, an ESPA-FPPT thruster and a monofilament vaporization thruster. The site says these use safer propellant alternatives to rare noble gases.

Space hardware includes CAMFlow, a mass flow controller, GRASP, a serial port, and DISI, a sensor integration product. The site also lists mission optimization software, including DyLAN and BLAZE. Its THERMOSYS 5 toolbox is a suite of simulation tools for air conditioning and refrigeration. It was developed at the University of Illinois and is distributed by CU Aerospace.

Engineering services include spacecraft propulsion, high energy lasers, modeling and simulation, advanced materials, plasma and discharge engineering, robotics, controls, diode lasers and fuel cell technology. The site says the company also works on low temperature sterilization and plasma assisted combustion.

The site says the company holds 17 US patents and 3 European and Canadian patents. It says its products are used by government, industrial and educational customers. The site notes that DUPLEX was deployed from the International Space Station in December 2025, and that a DUPLEX update was presented at SmallSat 2026.

The company is AS9100D certified and ISO 9001:2015 certified by NSF-ISR. Its address is 3001 Newmark Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61822, and its phone number is 217-239-1701. The site also links to publications, product videos and an eBook brochure.