Varda Space Industries is a winner of the 2025 Gizmodo Science Fair for successfully launching a first-of-its-kind in-orbit manufacturing spacecraft and returning it to Earth, bringing home a batch of space-made drugs that could revolutionize the industry.
The question
Is space the new frontier when it comes to manufacturing pharmaceuticals and other materials?
The results
The California startup became the first company to land a spacecraft on U.S. soil. Early last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Varda a Part 450 reentry license, which falls under new regulations. Since then, the company has wasted no time in launching its space factories to orbit, using its 264-pound (120-kilogram) capsules to crystallize drugs in microgravity and return them to Earth. Varda has launched and landed three missions thus far, with the fourth capsule currently in orbit and a fifth one planned before the end of this year.
Varda launched its first capsule, W-Series 1, in June 2023 on board SpaceX’s Transporter 8 rideshare mission. The company used the capsule to grow ritonavir—a drug used to treat HIV—while it was mounted to Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft in microgravity.
Although the mission was a success, Varda faced a major hurdle in returning its capsule back to Earth. “We didn’t have a reentry license at the time,” Delian Asparouhov, president and co-founder of Varda, told Gizmodo.
The U.S. Air Force denied Varda’s request to land its capsule at a Utah training area, and the FAA withheld reentry approval, leaving the capsule stranded in space for months.
“Being up in orbit every day is a terrifying outcome where on any one day there’s limited risk of the vehicle going haywire, but over the course of eight months, you’re just adding up a bunch of risks. A component could fail, a micrometeorite could hit [the capsule],” Asparouhov added. “And we couldn’t really make more engineering progress, because what’s the point of getting a second, third, and fourth vehicle ready to fly when the first one is basically stuck up there?”
Varda had originally intended for its capsule to spend one month in orbit to complete its in-space manufacturing experiment, but the mission was extended as the company navigated through regulatory obstacles. The capsule finally reentered Earth’s atmosphere and landed in the U.S. Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024.
... continue reading