Beyond Reach Labs is a New York space-hardware startup building ultra-light deployable solar arrays that pack down to the size of a dining table and unfold to the size of a football field in orbit, delivering roughly 10x more usable power per launch without adding mass or volume. Founded by former NASA researcher Mitchell Fogelson and ex-SpaceX parachute lead Pele Collins, the company grew out of NASA-funded research into kilometer-scale space structures and is targeting a 2027 in-space flight demonstration.
Diffraqtion is a Somerville, Massachusetts deeptech company building what it calls the first quantum camera for satellites and telescopes. Spun out of research at MIT and the University of Maryland, its photon-counting sensors paired with AI aim to extract far more information from incoming light than conventional CMOS or CCD sensors, letting smaller, cheaper optics see beyond the diffraction limit. The company targets space domain awareness, defense, and Earth observation, and raised $4.2M in pre-seed funding in January 2026 alongside a DARPA SBIR contract.