Space Domain Awareness & Adaptive RF

Making the upper orbits usable — and watchable.

Mithril builds electrostatically actuated antennas that give space-based radar the adaptability of a phased array at the cost and mass of a fixed reflector. One reconfigurable aperture to monitor, scan, and open economic access to MEO, GEO, and cislunar space.

The Problem

Space radar has been stuck with an impossible tradeoff.

For forty years, large-aperture RF systems have had to choose between adaptability and affordability. Neither option gives you a sensor that can watch the orbits that matter most.

01

Phased arrays

Fully adaptive — beam steering, reconfiguration, multi-mission capability. But they cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars and weigh thousands of kilograms at the apertures long-range radar requires.

02

Fixed reflectors

Mass- and cost-efficient. But rigid — one orbit regime, one beam geometry, no reconfiguration once deployed. They can't adapt to a changing mission.

03

Mithril's actuated reflector

Phased-array-class adaptability at reflector-class cost and mass — a single aperture that reconfigures across orbits and missions, entirely in software.

The Mission

The next generation of space radar.

Monitor

Detect and track objects and activity in orbits that go largely unwatched today, from resident space objects to emerging threats.

Scan

Reconfigure a single aperture across orbit regimes and mission profiles — the same hardware serves radar and communications, switched in software.

Open access

Bring the cost and mass of large-aperture sensing down far enough to make MEO, GEO, and cislunar space economically viable to operate in.

Selected, credentialed, and teamed with

DARPA
Air Force Research Laboratory
NATO DIANA
U.S. Space Systems Command
Kratos Defense
Northrop Grumman
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Draper
Why Now

The window for MEO is open right now.

The U.S. is fielding a next-generation missile defense architecture with a confirmed space-based sensing layer — and no commercial provider operates a radar asset in MEO today. At the same time, proliferating LEO constellations are straining ground infrastructure that was never designed to be reconfigurable.

Mithril's core technology was awarded a DARPA ERIS contract and selected for on-orbit qualification aboard the International Space Station, and the company is NATO DIANA credentialed — validating the technology at exactly the moment both the defense and commercial markets are in procurement mode.

Read about VERA, our ISS mission →
1-meter electrostatically actuated antenna prototype under test in an anechoic chamber
1-meter actuated antenna prototype under RF test in an anechoic chamber.
Join Us

Building the sensor layer for the next era of space.

Whether you're a defense partner, investor, or future teammate — we'd like to hear from you.