Media Lario

Our Mission

To serve our customers with solutions to their optics requirements by exceeding their expectations, being attentive to their needs at all times and always doing the best work we possibly can.

Our history

Media Lario S.r.l. was founded in 1993 for the purpose of building the first of its kind all metal optics - grown in a chemical bath - for the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA). The XMM-Newton was launched in December 1999 and continues operating to this day at a distance of 40,000 kilometres from the Earth. Our mirrors continue to function at full specification, with recent imaging achieving the discovery of the last 5% of unidentified Baryonic Matter in the Universe.

Since then, our technology has been used in numerous X-ray space telescope missions, being chosen recently for the €1.5 billion ATHENA telescope, due to launch in the early 2030s. Recently, we were also very proud to have supplied the optics which were used to take the first-ever image of a black hole as part of a 50m large scale telescope in Mexico as well as a large scale telescope array in Atacama Chile. Additionally, our technology has pioneered the use of new materials for high specification optics and optical systems in satellites for Earth Observation as well as for Free Space Optical Communications.

About

Over the past three decades, Media Lario has earned the trust of numerous world-leading space agencies, including ESA, NASA, ASI (Italy), and CAS (China) as well as leading aerospace companies including Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales Alenia Space.

Being located in northern Italy, we benefit from deep developments in metallurgical technologies as well as optics design. The concept of X-ray space telescopes was born in Italy, tracing its roots to the optical research of Galileo hundreds of years ago and to the metallurgical technologies developed in this area since Roman times.

Looking forward, we believe that new technologies in optical design and manufacturing will be increasingly important, even mission defining, for New Space (Space 2.0) missions.  Media Lario intends to remain at the forefront by continuing to invest heavily in R&D in our areas of specialty.