Beyond Reach Labs, a Brooklyn-based aerospace company founded by SpaceX veterans, has opened a 16,000-square-foot research and manufacturing facility at Industry City to develop deployable solar arrays for high-powered satellites, commercial space stations and orbital data centers.
The company is building Flarewing, a patent-pending solar array architecture designed to provide substantially more electrical power in orbit while minimizing the volume required during launch.
According to Beyond Reach Labs, Flarewing can compress to approximately the size of a dining table for launch and expand to roughly the length of a football field once deployed in space.
The company said the system can generate up to 10 times more power per launch than traditional solar panels, depending on configuration.
Flarewing will be available in three configurations ranging from 8 kilowatts to 200 kilowatts of output, allowing the same product family to support smaller research platforms as well as more power-intensive commercial space stations and orbital computing infrastructure.
The opportunity is emerging as the next generation of commercial space infrastructure requires much larger amounts of electricity.
Satellites traditionally operate within relatively constrained power envelopes, but planned commercial stations, large communications platforms and orbital data centers could require substantially more energy to support computing, communications, thermal management and other systems.
Beyond Reach Labs is attempting to address that challenge by increasing the surface area that can be deployed from a compact launch configuration.
Its largest systems can deploy to areas of as much as 625 square meters.
The company said its structural design addresses vibration issues that have historically limited the practical size of deployable orbital solar arrays, allowing larger power-generating structures to be launched without requiring proportionately larger launch vehicles.
Beyond Reach Labs plans to complete ground qualification of its smaller Flarewing-S system by the end of 2026, followed by customer integration in early 2027.
The company is targeting production of at least 10 units per day by the end of 2027 from its new Brooklyn manufacturing operation.
The facility at Industry City represents a notable geographic bet for an industry whose commercial hardware companies have increasingly clustered around Southern California and other established aerospace centers.
Beyond Reach Labs argues that New York can once again become an important location for aerospace manufacturing.
The region has a significant aerospace history. Grumman Aerospace, based in Bethpage on Long Island, built the Apollo Lunar Module used to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon.
Beyond Reach Labs said its new manufacturing operation represents an effort to build on that history while creating an East Coast ecosystem for the current commercial space industry.
The company selected New York partly because it believes the region can attract aerospace engineers who want to live and work on the East Coast rather than relocate to traditional aerospace hubs.
Industry City provided infrastructure that is relatively difficult for hardware startups to find inside New York City.
The 35-acre Brooklyn campus offers approximately 50 megawatts of available power along with oversized freight elevators, heavy floor-loading capabilities and industrial spaces suitable for manufacturing, testing and engineering.
Beyond Reach Labs discovered the location through Ultra Robotics, another Y Combinator company that expanded its industrial robotics operations at Industry City.
The aerospace startup now joins a broader group of technology, robotics and advanced manufacturing companies operating from the Sunset Park campus.
For Beyond Reach Labs, the location is intended to support both research and development and scaled manufacturing rather than functioning primarily as an office.
That distinction is important as space companies increasingly attempt to move from low-volume aerospace production toward manufacturing models capable of supplying larger commercial constellations and infrastructure projects.
Flarewing’s design is also intended to support a range of orbital customers without requiring each customer to commission an entirely different solar architecture.
The small, medium and large configurations give Beyond Reach Labs a common platform that can potentially serve research missions, satellites, space stations and much larger power-hungry orbital infrastructure.
Orbital data centers represent one of the more ambitious potential applications.
Companies exploring computing infrastructure in space would need access to large and reliable power systems to operate processors, networking equipment and supporting systems at meaningful scale.
Beyond Reach Labs is positioning Flarewing as part of the power infrastructure that could make such projects practical.
The company is now expanding its workforce at Industry City as it prepares Flarewing for qualification and customer deployment.
Industry City, meanwhile, is increasingly positioning itself as a New York hub for companies building physical technology.
The campus is home to more than 700 businesses across areas including AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, e-commerce, design and life sciences, with approximately 8,500 people working there each day.
For Beyond Reach Labs, establishing production in Brooklyn is both an operational decision and part of a broader effort to demonstrate that modern aerospace hardware can be designed and manufactured outside the industry’s traditional geographic centers.
If its production targets are achieved, the company could move relatively quickly from qualification at the end of 2026 to significantly higher-volume manufacturing during 2027 as commercial space operators begin demanding larger amounts of orbital power.
KEY QUOTES:
“Beyond Reach Labs is building the power infrastructure that makes the next generation of space stations and orbital data centers possible. When we thought about where to permanently land, New York kept winning the argument because the engineers we want to hire want to be here and they don’t want to leave. Industry City has the power, the infrastructure and the community we need to scale our business.”
Mitchell Fogelson, CEO of Beyond Reach Labs
“Beyond Reach Labs is exactly the kind of company Industry City was built for. They needed industrial power, freight infrastructure and room to build innovative hardware in New York City, and they found all of it here. New York’s aerospace story is far from over, and we look forward to seeing the next chapter written on this campus.”
Jeff Fein, Senior Vice President of Industry City
