SpaceX Launches the First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite

A tiny tritium battery could open darker, colder parts of space.

A tiny satellite launched by SpaceX on Tuesday may mark a large shift in how spacecraft get power.

The small spacecraft, called BOHR, rode to orbit on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Tucked inside the CubeSat is a small tritium-powered device built by City Labs, a Miami company that says it has flown the first commercial nuclear-powered payload in space.

“This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,” City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy said in a statement.

The point of the mission is modest but important: to test whether a privately built nuclear micropower source can survive launch, operate in orbit and pass through the regulatory system. SpaceX said Transporter-17 carried 81 payloads, including CubeSats, microsats and orbital transfer vehicles.

BOHR is not carrying a nuclear reactor or a plutonium generator like those used to explore the outer solar system (like Voyager and New Horizons) or harsh environments like the surface of Mars (such as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers). Its payload uses tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, that slowly decays and releases beta particles. A semiconductor converts some of that energy into a steady trickle of electricity. If that approach works safely and reliably in orbit, similar devices could one day help power small spacecraft, sensors or heaters in places where sunlight is weak, intermittent or absent — from shadowed lunar craters to the long lunar night.

A Battery That Feeds on Decay

BOHR stands for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability satellite. Its payload uses City Labs’ NanoTritium technology, a betavoltaic power source that converts energy from tritium decay directly into electricity with a semiconductor.

That makes it different from the nuclear power systems NASA has used for decades. NASA’s radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, use heat from plutonium-238 decay to produce electricity. They have powered missions far from the sun. The Voyager probes, and NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers use multi-mission RTGs for both power and heat.

City Labs’ device is far smaller and far weaker. The CubeSat itself still relies on solar power for its main operations, while the tritium payload acts as an independent power source and a proof of concept. Cabauy told Florida Today that the technology is “very low power,” and that the company expects results within weeks or months, even though the payload could remain in orbit for about 10 years.

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“We’re the first. This is going to be the world’s first commercial nuclear launch,” Cabauy said before the launch.

City Labs says its devices emit low levels of radiation and can be handled under commercial conditions. NASA has also described tritium betavoltaics as a possible way to run centimeter-scale autonomous sensors in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions, where extreme cold and lack of sunlight make ordinary batteries difficult to use.

“Normally, nuclear materials, specific devices, you can only ship it between one company to another, and they have to have approved radiation facilities to handle material,” Cabauy said. “But not with Tritium power sources.”

Why Space Wants Nuclear Power Again

Nuclear power has never disappeared from spaceflight. In March, NASA announced its Skyfall mission, which will involve sending a spacecraft to Mars that is entirely powered by nuclear fission. But until now, any nuclear power project in space has mostly belonged to government-mandated missions.

“The innovation here is not just in the technology. It’s in the regulatory part,” Cabauy told Payload. “Nuclear has been done for decades. NASA’s been able to do it, other government agencies around the world have done it, but to really take it to the next step [and] to scale up, it’s got to be commercial.”

BOHR received FAA authorization under the U.S. framework for launching spacecraft containing nuclear systems, created by National Security Presidential Memorandum-20 in 2019. The memorandum established a process for approving launches involving space nuclear systems.

The timing is not accidental. NASA and the Department of Energy said in January that they were developing a lunar surface reactor intended to operate for years without refueling. NASA’s lunar technology office describes fission surface power as a way to provide continuous energy regardless of sunlight or temperature, with a first lunar reactor targeted for 2030.

That kind of reactor would sit at the far end of the power scale. City Labs’ tritium devices sit at the other end: small, steady sources for sensors, heaters or low-power electronics.

Nuclear Power for the Moon

Cabauy said that such devices could produce “10s of watts of heat,” enough for many future lunar surface missions. He said the company is also working on independent heat sources for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, with the aim of helping missions survive the two-week lunar night or operate in permanently shadowed regions.

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“We’re excited about opening this path up, but it’s not just for City Labs,” Cabauy said “We’re opening up the commercial nuclear space for a bunch of other companies who are also trying to do this type of thing.”

Engineers still need to see how the payload performs in orbit, whether the system can scale, and how future missions balance safety, cost and usefulness.

But the launch suggests that commercial space nuclear power is on its way to becoming more commonplace in orbit.

“BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment,” Cabauy said.