Project Omega and Charter Space have announced a partnership to evaluate how next-generation radioisotope power systems could reduce risk for spacecraft. The agreement, announced from El Segundo, California, targets two areas: satellite resilience and a new approach to insuring them.
The project plans to package the fuel, strontium-90, in a battery roughly 2.5 centimeters (about one inch) per side, to serve as an onboard backup power source. The goal is to lower the likelihood that an operator loses a space asset after an anomaly. The two companies are also studying a device similar to an aircraft black box, which would help reconstruct the causes of an in-orbit failure and prevent it from happening again.
Charter Space is an insurance company and sees the research as a way to improve the odds of success and survival for costly spacecraft. Founder and CEO Yuk Chi Chan describes a persistent power source that makes commercial vehicles safer and easier to insure. According to Chan, the way space insurance works also needs updating, so that finance and capital can participate in the sector more easily.
Project Omega develops power systems capable of operating for years or decades without sunlight, refueling or recharging. Its CEO, Staff Sheehan, said it is time to bring radioisotope power sources to the commercial space sector, as the number of operators is growing. The company already works with the US Department of Energy and announced a multimillion-dollar contract with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, over the summer.
The technical background is well established. Radioisotope generators have powered scientific missions for decades where sunlight is weak or absent: 14-day lunar nights, the high latitudes of Mars, the regions around Jupiter. So far the reference fuel has been plutonium-238, which is produced in limited quantities. Strontium-90 opens up an alternative for commercial applications, where satellites are increasingly numerous and the cost of an in-orbit loss weighs directly on insurance premiums.
If the research delivers results, a satellite with a nuclear backup battery could remain in contact and recoverable after a failure of its solar panels or main electronics. For insurers, that would be a measurable data point on which to build different policies. For the nuclear industry, it would be a new market, outside power plants and inside the private space economy.
