[2] It was designed, built, and operated primarily by students at the University of Colorado Boulder with professional mentorship and involvement from professors, scientists, and engineers in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, as well as Southwest Research Institute, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory.

The student lead (project manager, systems engineer) was Dr. James Paul Mason, who has since become a Co-I for the second flight model of MinXSS.

MinXSS launched on 2015 December 6 to the International Space Station as part of the Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS OA-4 cargo resupply mission.

MinXSS is also the first flight of the Blue Canyon Technologies XACT attitude determination and control system (ADCS), one of the only commercially available 3-axis ADCSs for CubeSats.

Additionally, a small aperture made of tungsten was attached to the front of the detector to reduce the likelihood of photon saturation and limit the field of view to ±4º.

[12][15] Despite the loose requirements placed on CubeSats compared to larger spacecraft missions, MinXSS underwent the same rigorous tests that are considered standard in the aerospace industry.

Below are the communications specifications:[17] Beacons recorded by ham radio operators can be sent to the MinXSS team (in KISS format) to contribute to overall data capture.

MinXSS first light was presented at a press briefing and a contributed poster during the American Astronomical Society's 47th Solar Physics Division Meeting in Boulder, Colorado.

[19][20][21] Over 40 GOES C-class and 7 M-class solar flares occurred in the first weeks of the MinXSS mission, and those observations were downlinked to the ground for analysis.

Additionally, MinXSS was the first flight of the Blue Canyon Technologies XACT 3-axis attitude determination and control system (ADCS).

MinXSS-2 is identical to MinXSS-1 except for: MinXSS-2 is planned to deploy from the Spaceflight Industries SSO-A SmallSat Express mission,[22] using a SpaceX Falcon 9.

Roughly 40 professionals have contributed with varying levels of involvement, from providing feedback at design reviews to writing flight software.