A tritium ‘nuclear battery’ just reached orbit for the first time
The nuclear age has quietly reached commercial spaceflight. City Labs, a Miami firm, has launched BOHR, which it calls the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and the first nuclear CubeSat. The craft is about the size of a softball. It flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare on 7 July, alongside 80 other payloads, the company announced.
The claim needs a caveat. No reactor powers BOHR. Its satellite bus still runs on ordinary solar panels. The nuclear part, a small “betavoltaic” battery, powers only a payload. The mission aims to prove that battery works in orbit.
How a nuclear battery works
The battery draws on tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. As the tritium decays, it gives off beta particles. Those particles strike a semiconductor and knock loose a trickle of electric current. City Labs calls the technology NanoTritium.
The output stays minute, from nanowatts to microwatts,...
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