Nuclear power in space just got a little more real. A small Florida company called City Labs launched the first commercial nuclear-powered satellite on Tuesday.
The satellite is named BOHR — short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability. It hitched a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission alongside 80 other payloads. The rocket dropped it into an orbit about 350 to 400 miles up.
BOHR is tiny. It’s built on a “1U” CubeSat platform — about the size of a softball. Its power source is a nuclear betavoltaic battery that generates electricity from tritium decay. Tritium’s a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, but it’s far less toxic than plutonium or uranium. The NRC says its radiation “cannot penetrate the skin.”
City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy called it “a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space.” The company’s NanoTritium generator will power a payload in demonstration mode, while the satellite itself runs on conventional solar.
Betavoltaic batteries aren’t going to power a smartphone. We’re talking nanowatts to microwatts. But they’re great for low-power applications that need to run for years without maintenance — remote sensors in polar regions, undersea gear, secure communications hardware.
NASA’s already working with City Labs on using tritium power for sensor networks in the Moon’s permanently shadowed craters. The US Air Force and Space Force have also handed out research contracts.
BOHR was the first commercial nuclear mission to clear the FAA’s new nuclear launch approval process. That matters because until now, every nuclear-powered spacecraft was a government project.
This is the first step. Future missions will carry far more nuclear material. But you have to start somewhere.
