Josh Weiner
Nuclear startup Antares achieved a significant milestone in June when it switched on its Mark-0 microreactor, becoming the first company to reach criticality in the Trump administration’s pilot program racing to deploy a next generation of small nuclear reactors.
The company’s next step is installing its 1-megawatt R1 reactor at the US Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina by September 2028, part of a broader federal push to deploy nuclear microreactors across domestic military bases to address persistent power reliability problems.
The Army expects more than 20 nuclear microreactors to ultimately be built and operated across Department of War installations, with five vendors selected for the program, including Antares at Fort Bragg.
Antares founder and CEO Jordan Bramble has ambitions well beyond military bases on Earth, aiming to install an R1-S reactor, the "S" standing for space, on the moon as soon as 2030.
That lunar ambition received a significant boost in September when the Department of Defense awarded Antares $161 million to develop an R1-S reactor integrated with spacecraft systems for flight certification, formally tying the company's space plans to military funding.
The dual-track strategy, powering remote military installations on Earth while simultaneously developing space-rated reactors for lunar deployment, positions Antares at the center of both the Pentagon's base-power modernization push and NASA's broader interest in nuclear power for future space missions.
