DPA26TZ06-DV005Pre-ReleaseSBIR

Fuel-Flexible Spacecraft Electric Propulsion System

Department of DefenseDARPA

AI Overview

Sought: A fuel-flexible electric propulsion system for spacecraft that operates on multiple propellants—air, water, ammonia derivatives, and CO2 mixtures—using shared components. This addresses mission flexibility limitations and reduces costly development cycles by enabling a single system to serve diverse orbital environments and refueling architectures.

This summary is AI-generated from the official solicitation.

Key Details

Agency
Department of Defense
Funding Amount
Release Date
September 2, 2026
Due Date
October 21, 2026

Official Description

Spacecraft electric propulsion (EP) systems typically rely on noble gas fuels (xenon, krypton, argon) stored in high pressure tanks. These fuels are unattractive for sustained ambient-air operation in very Low Earth Orbit (vLEO), or for liquid refueling operations in higher orbits using water or chemical rocket fuels as output propellants. Furthermore, thruster development to date has been highly specific to individual fuels, requiring costly development of entirely new systems for new propellan...

View on official source

Change History

Opportunity AddedSep 2, 2026 at 12:03 PM

Fuel-Flexible Spacecraft Electric Propulsion System

New opportunity: Fuel-Flexible Spacecraft Electric Propulsion System

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