We are not the first people to do a drag sail by any means, so companies are already using this tech. The difference is that we did it faster and WAYYYYY cheaper than it's been done before, especially at the scale of a cubesat.

Our aerospace professor Rick Fleeter had access to a launch slot so 4 of us decided to spin up the project into something big. It grew from there into a team of 65+ plus students and engineers from across the world. All the engineering and fab was done at Brown by students; the multinational part of the team was our launch partner, D-Orbit, who provided a carrier satellite for the ride up to space.