Cubesat mission costs depend pretty heavily on launch options. For this, it isn't entirely clear if it's included in the challenge. But you can generally expect

Cubesat mission costs depend pretty heavily on launch options. For this, it isn't entirely clear if it's included in the challenge. But you can generally expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-150k for launch to LEO. Design and construction costs probably aren't very large for materials, but in labor (FTE). If the work is being done by skilled students as part of a university project, they could probably build and test a working cubesat for under $20k So a whole cubesat mission can actually fit well within the limits of a sub 200k grant. But again, like most things, it's the labor costs that can make or break that.