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.
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/spacex-launches-the-first-commercial-nuclear-powered-satellite/
