{"id":91556,"date":"2026-10-31T23:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/city-labs-flew-20-curies-now-it-wants-faa-approval-for-10-million\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T23:19:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:19:17","slug":"city-labs-flew-20-curies-now-it-wants-faa-approval-for-10-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/city-labs-flew-20-curies-now-it-wants-faa-approval-for-10-million\/","title":{"rendered":"City Labs Flew 20 Curies. Now It Wants FAA Approval for 10 Million."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"City
City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy presents the company\u2019s next licensing target at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

City Labs flew 20 curies of tritium on its first nuclear-powered satellite. It now wants approval for 10 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re submitting right now to the FAA an application for 10 million curies. That\u2019s 300 watts thermal,\u201d Peter Cabauy, co-founder and CEO of City Labs, said Thursday in a technical brief at Silicon Valley Space Week\u2019s MilSat Symposium. The company is working with Sandia National Laboratories, which runs the nuclear safety analysis, \u201cso that we can compete and supplement what\u2019s being done with plutonium heat sources today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking with SatNews after the talk, Cabauy said City Labs talks with the FAA every two weeks and expects to make the formal submission in December, aiming for approval \u201csometime next year, summer.\u201d His slide put it as a 2027 licensing target of up to 10 million curies per mission.<\/p>\n

A heater flight first<\/h2>\n

Before that, City Labs plans to fly a tritium heater next year under the approval it already holds. City Labs\u2019 BOHR mission, which the company calls the first commercial nuclear satellite, launched in July under an FAA payload authorization for up to 10,000 curies. \u201cWe launched only 20 curies because it was our demonstration,\u201d Cabauy said.<\/p>\n

That authorization covers a whole class of devices rather than a single launch. \u201cIt\u2019s not like the old days where you just get approval to launch one,\u201d he said. \u201cWe approved a class.\u201d City Labs has filed an amendment to add its heat sources to that class, which he hopes to have by January so the heater can fly next year. Each heater unit holds 1,000 curies, he said, and customers can combine them: one gives about 30 milliwatts of heat, and 30 together give a watt.<\/p>\n

BOHR is also now public. \u201cA few days ago we put the live telemetry data on BOHR on our website,\u201d Cabauy said, showing its voltage, current and sensor readings.<\/p>\n

Surviving the lunar night<\/h2>\n

Cabauy\u2019s case rests on where solar runs out. \u201cNuclear should be used whenever you have a situation where solar can\u2019t be used,\u201d he said on stage.<\/p>\n

Commercial lunar landers last about 14 days. \u201cThen the night comes in, and $400 million is lost,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need nuclear on the Moon.\u201d Keeping a lander warm through the night with batteries is costly, he told SatNews. \u201cFor every watt of heat, it\u2019s five kilograms. It\u2019s a misuse of mass and volume.\u201d A tritium heater, he said, can do the same job with a tiny fraction of that mass.<\/p>\n

Modular where plutonium isn\u2019t<\/h2>\n

Plutonium can\u2019t fill the gap at scale, Cabauy argued. It\u2019s difficult to produce, and nuclear-powered launches have averaged about one every five years. Plutonium sources are also clad heavily so they can survive an accident. With tritium, he said, the FAA is letting City Labs build in small modules placed only where heat is needed, such as a single chip or battery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be able to dial in in small increments and do something the plutonium can never do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The regulatory path opened in 2019, when National Security Presidential Memorandum 20 allowed commercial companies to launch nuclear radioisotopes without a presidential signature for each mission. City Labs was the first to use it, which Cabauy credited to 20 years of work making its betavoltaic batteries safe enough for an NRC general license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy presents the company\u2019s next licensing target at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews) City Labs flew 20 curies of tritium on its first nuclear-powered satellite. It now wants approval for 10 million. \u201cWe\u2019re submitting right now to the FAA an application for 10 million curies. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}