Key facts
- City Labs plans to submit a formal application to the FAA in December for approval to fly 10 million curies of radioactive material per mission.
- The requested 10 million curies of radioactive material would provide 300 watts of thermal power, according to City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy.
- City Labs intends to fly a tritium heater next year following an expected approval of a class amendment by January.
- Individual City Labs tritium heater units contain 1,000 curies each.
City Labs plans to submit a formal application to the FAA in December seeking approval to fly 10 million curies of radioactive material per mission, satnews.com reported.
The requested radioactive material would provide 300 watts of thermal power, according to Peter Cabauy, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Cabauy shared the figures during a technical brief at Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium. “We’re submitting right now to the FAA an application for 10 million curies. That’s 300 watts thermal,” he said.
City Labs launched its BOHR platform in July with 20 curies of tritium even though the FAA had authorized as many as 10,000 curies. The company used the smaller amount because the flight served as a demonstration. City Labs describes BOHR as the first commercial nuclear satellite, and the company recently made live telemetry data from the platform available on its website.
The company intends to fly a tritium heater next year, contingent on expected approval of a class amendment by January. It has filed an amendment to add its specific heat sources to an existing FAA authorization that covers a class of devices. Each individual heater unit contains 1,000 curies, and the modular units can combine to provide specific amounts of heat, such as one unit providing 30 milliwatts or 30 units providing one watt.
City Labs is collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories to perform nuclear safety analysis. The partnership aims to allow the company to compete with and supplement current plutonium-based heat sources. Plutonium heat sources are heavily clad for accident survival and are difficult to produce, with nuclear-powered launches averaging once every five years.
Peter Cabauy argued that tritium heaters are more mass-efficient than batteries for keeping lunar landers warm during the 14-day lunar night. He said using batteries for every watt of heat requires five kilograms of mass, which he considers an inefficient use of volume and mass.
National Security Presidential Memorandum 20, issued in 2019, allows commercial entities to launch nuclear radioisotopes without a presidential signature for every mission. City Labs was the first company to use this regulatory path.
Cabauy expects the company to receive licensing for 10 million curies by summer 2027.
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