MEK — full-body haptic EVA training

Ethereal Matter had built MEK, a full-body haptic EVA trainer with real force feedback, but it sat in the hard gap between an impressive prototype and a product NASA or investors would take seriously.

Move MEK across the go-to-market gap: a credible procurement pathway, NASA credibility, and investor-ready positioning.

We led business development, procurement strategy, and investor positioning, and drove the technology into a five-office coordinated review at NASA Marshall — the kind of internal traction that turns a demo into a program candidate.

MEK completed a five-office coordinated review at NASA Marshall and entered conversations toward Artemis-adjacent integration. It is also a product the Lab may incubate.

How MEK works

MEK pairs photoreal virtual reality with physics-driven, bi-directional haptics to recreate the feel of working in space while still on Earth. A trainee is suspended in an armature that covers the full human range of motion; every interaction pushes back with accurate inertia and center of mass, so a floating object behaves as it would in orbit — mass without gravity. An onboard LiDAR scanner captures the user's motion for avatar creation, analytics, and a first-person view.

Because it is software-driven, MEK generates bespoke, mission-specific training on demand, with the extreme light, glare, and shadow of the 45-minute orbital day represented accurately. It is built on a multi-user platform: trainees interact and see each other in 3D regardless of physical location, and standardized emergency, rescue, and maintenance procedures can be rehearsed with an in-scene trainer avatar at no marginal cost. Each unit is a standalone, low-maintenance, networked platform — capacity scales simply by building more.

Against the alternatives — neutral buoyancy, parabolic flight, ARGOS, and conventional VR labs — MEK is the only approach that combines accurate microgravity physics, a complete CAD-accurate model, multi-user photoreal settings, location independence, and low cost per use. LiDAR motion-capture analytics turn every session into quantifiable evaluation metrics. Developed by Ethereal Matter.