The Steam TunaCan Thruster is a water-powered, electrothermal propulsion system specifically designed for CubeSats.

The tailored shape factor has been designed to allow its installation in the “tunacan” volume located outside the main CubeSat structure, available in most of the CubeSats deployers. This allows to add propulsion capabilities, but without sacrificing any internal volume used for payloads and other subsystems. Multiple TunaCan Thrusters can be installed on CubeSat platforms larger than 3U.

The system uses just low-pressure water as the main propellant, for added safety and simplified operation, and it is designed to be easily integrated into any satellite.

The TunaCan Thruster can be operated at a power level between 5W to 20W, depending on the CubeSat’s resource availability. Because of its simple design, the propulsion system does not cause any RF or magnetic interference.

Typical use cases include:

• orbit adjustments
• constellation management
• collision avoidance
• de-orbiting

The TunaCan Thruster is currently TRL7 and it is space-qualified according to ESA ECSS-E-ST-10-03C and NASA GSFC-STD-7000A. Flight heritage is expected in 2024, however most of its technology has been already successfully tested in space in 2023, on board of the Steam Thruster One.