{"id":790710,"date":"2026-07-09T14:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/790710\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T14:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:45:11","slug":"first-commercial-nuclear-satellite-launched-on-spacex-mission-ans-nuclear-newswire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/790710\/","title":{"rendered":"First commercial nuclear satellite launched on SpaceX mission — ANS \/ Nuclear Newswire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The assembled BOHR CubeSat. (Photo: City Labs)<\/p>\n

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A diagram of the BOHR CubeSat assembly. (Image: City Labs)<\/p>\n

The technology: The betavoltaic battery uses tritium trapped in a metal hydride matrix as a fuel source. A semiconductor structure is used to absorb high-energy electrons called beta particles emitted by the tritium, capturing the kinetic energy and directly producing electricity.<\/p>\n

City Labs was recently selected for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency\u2019s Rads to Watts<\/a> program, through which it will be exploring a new metal hydride to see if it can pack more tritium into a given volume, improving the power density of its design.<\/p>\n

BOHR uses solar power for satellite bus operations and City Labs\u2019 betavoltaic battery to power and validate the payload demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,\u201d said Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs. \u201cBOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regulatory process: In 2019, National Security Presidential Memorandum \u2013 20<\/a> (NSPM-20) laid out updates to the process for launching spacecraft containing nuclear systems. Now the Department of Transportation, which includes the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), directs the coordination of various agencies to review the safety analysis for missions with nuclear components. The FAA updated its launch regulations in 2020.<\/p>\n

The City Labs press release said the company received support in regulatory engagement from Sandia National Laboratories and that its payload authorization for the BOHR mission was confirmed in September 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe BOHR spacecraft is the first commercial nuclear mission to exercise the [FAA] pathway for nuclear launch approval as laid out in [NSPM-20],\u201d said the press release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The assembled BOHR CubeSat. (Photo: City Labs) A diagram of the BOHR CubeSat assembly. (Image: City Labs) The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-790710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}