Commercial applications include optics for spacecraft and satellites, mirror components for telescopes, and mirrors for lasers, sensing, and solar energy collection.

The use of mirror assemblies is commonplace in the aerospace industry, as most satellites and spacecraft contain optics. The fabrication of these mirrors is extremely complex due to the nature of their intended use, which includes telescope lenses, camera optics, or laser mirrors. Some of the common requirements of spacecraft mirrors are that they have the correct optical curvature to some defined tolerance, they have low surface roughness, they have high reflectivity, and they are rigid (either against thermal expansion or flexing).