Rhea Space Activity

Rhea Space Activity is a Washington, D.C.-based space-technology startup developing AutoNav, an optical-celestial navigation system that lets spacecraft fix their position by photographing moving in-orbit and celestial objects — satellites, moons, planets, asteroids, comets — and matching the imagery against cataloged data, rather than depending on GPS. The underlying autonomous-navigation approach traces to NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Rhea has been adapting it for defense reentry vehicles and cislunar missions where GPS and radio signals are jammed, unavailable, or blocked by plasma blackout. The company flies hosted payloads on Varda Space Industries reentry capsules under Space Force and AFRL sponsorship, and has separately announced plans to fly a navigation payload on a lunar lander.

• Series A
• Defense
• Space Technology