SpaceX Puts First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite Into Orbit
This week, SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, carrying 81 payloads into a sun-synchronous orbit. Among them was a softball-sized BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) cubesat, built by Miami-based startup City Labs, the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite.
While governments have used radioisotope plutonium-fueled thermoelectric generators to power deep-space probes for decades, BOHR introduces a big shift in scale, accessibility, and technology. The satellite relies on City Labs' proprietary NanoTritium betavoltaic tech: rather than using fission or capturing heat from heavy radioactive elements, City Labs' nuclear battery leverages tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. As the tritium naturally decays, it emits low-energy beta particles. An integrated semiconductor structure catches these particles, converting their kinetic energy directly into a steady trickle of electrical current.
Because the energy output from this process is measured in nanowatts to microwatts, it is not yet powerful enough to run...
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