BEYOND REACH LABS REVIVES NEW YORK’S PLACE IN SPACE One Orbital Solar Array at a Time from Its New Industry City Headquarters

Decades after New York helped land Apollo on the moon, a team of SpaceX veterans is writing the city’s next chapter in space.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Beyond Reach Labs, a Brooklyn-based aerospace company founded by veterans of SpaceX, has opened a 16,000-square-foot research and manufacturing facility at Industry City in Brooklyn. The company builds deployable solar arrays for the next generation of high-powered satellites, commercial space stations, and orbital data centers, bringing aerospace hardware manufacturing back to New York City for the first time since Grumman built the lunar module that landed on the moon.

Space Needs Data Centers, Too

The commercial space infrastructure being built today requires far more electricity than existing solar technology can reliably deliver. Flarewing™ is Beyond Reach Labs’ answer to that problem — a patent-pending solar array structure that compresses to the size of a dining table for launch and expands to the length of a football field in orbit, producing up to 10 times more power per launch than traditional panels. In three configurations, output ranges from 8 to 200 kilowatts, giving space station operators and orbital data center builders a system that scales with their needs.

New York Has a Long Space History — and a Growing Ecosystem to Build Its Future

Space hardware development has been almost entirely a West Coast industry, clustered in Southern California since the Apollo era. But New York was once part of that story: Grumman Aerospace, based in Bethpage, Long Island, built the Apollo Lunar Module. Now Beyond Reach Labs is making the case that New York can be an aerospace hub again — the company chose New York specifically because the aerospace engineers it hires want to live on the East Coast, and because no one else was building the ecosystem to support them here.

Built in Brooklyn, Qualified for Orbit by the End of 2026

Industry City’s 35-acre innovation hub provided the infrastructure to make that possible. The campus’s 50 megawatts of available power, oversized freight elevators, and heavy floor loads gave Beyond Reach Labs what aerospace R&D requires but rarely finds in New York City. The team discovered Industry City through Ultra Robotics, a fellow Y Combinator company that expanded its industrial robot operations on campus, and joins a growing community of YC-backed companies that have also chosen Industry City as their New York base.

How Flarewing™ is changing the economics of space power:

• More power without a heavier rocket: Flarewing™ folds flat for launch and deploys to areas as large as 625 square meters in orbit. The structural architecture eliminates the vibration problems that have historically limited how large deployable arrays can go.
• One product family for the full range of orbital customers: Small, medium, and large configurations meet the needs of a small research platform or a large-scale orbital data center.
• Current mission — 10 units a day by the end of 2027: Ground qualification of Flarewing™-S is targeted for the end of 2026, customer integration for early 2027.

“Beyond Reach Labs is building the power infrastructure that makes the next generation of space stations and orbital data centers possible,” said Mitchell Fogelson, CEO of Beyond Reach Labs. “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.”

Industry City is home to more than 700 companies across AI, robotics, and advanced manufacturing, and has increasingly become a destination for hardware companies that need the infrastructure to build at scale.

“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,” said Jeff Fein, Senior Vice President of Industry City. “New York’s aerospace story is far from over, and we look forward to seeing the next chapter written on this campus.”

Beyond Reach Labs is actively expanding its team at Industry City. More information about the company and its Flarewing™ solar array systems is available at beyondreachlabs.io.

About Industry City

Industry City is a destination work hub for technology companies, creative brands and multi-disciplinary makers and fabricators in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. The 35-acre campus is home to more than 700 businesses and draws 8,500 daily workers across AI, robotics, e-commerce, design, retail, food & beverage and more. Each year, Industry City attracts 3.3 million visitors to its packed entertainment and event roster, and array of dining and shopping experiences. With heavy floor loads, freight access, enterprise-grade connectivity and access to 50 megawatts of power (at up to 22.5% in energy cost savings), Industry City is built for companies that are building the future.

Building something that needs this kind of power and infrastructure? Explore leasing opportunities at Industry City or reach out at lease@industrycity.com.