Varda Space Industries has been awarded a substantial $48 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). This contract focuses on testing military payloads using the company’s innovative reentry capsules.
Varda Space, a California-based company, specializes in in-space manufacturing. They’ve developed a unique factory-in-orbit spacecraft—a compact 120-kilogram satellite designed to produce valuable materials like pharmaceuticals in the microgravity of space. These materials are then safely returned to Earth within a capsule incorporating advanced thermal protection materials developed by NASA for safe reentry.
The four-year agreement with AFRL, publicized on November 26, utilizes Varda’s W-Series reentry capsules as platforms for testing payloads at hypersonic speeds. These spacecraft are constructed using Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus.
A key collaboration involved NASA Ames, which provided the thermal protection material, known as C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator).
Varda successfully demonstrated its technology in February 2024, when its W-1 spacecraft produced and returned a batch of ritonavir, an antiretroviral drug. The capsule reentered the atmosphere at an incredible 18,000 miles per hour before landing precisely via parachute.
The AFRL contract underscores the growing military interest in reentry vehicles for various applications, including hypersonic testing. Hypersonic speeds present considerable engineering challenges, particularly concerning thermal protection, navigation, and sensor performance.
Using commercial reentry capsules provides the Air Force a practical operational environment to test vehicle subsystems under genuine flight conditions. This approach proves more cost-effective than traditional hypersonic test flights, which often depend on specialized and expensive experimental aircraft.
This new contract builds upon Varda’s previous collaborations with the Air Force. In 2023, the company received funding to adapt its capsules for hypersonic testing.
Varda’s upcoming mission, W-2, is planned for early 2025. This mission will showcase the Varda Hypersonic Testbed vehicle. The capsule will carry an AFRL-developed spectrometer payload called OSPREE (Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the Reentry Environment) to gather vital data during atmospheric descent.