Milestones
- W-1 launched on Transporter-812 Jun 2023Complete.
- W-1 lands at Utah Test and Training Range21 Feb 2024Complete.
- W-2 lands at Koonibba, AustraliaFeb 2025Complete.
- Regular commercial drug-processing flightsNowCurrent milestone.
Most important updates
- 18 May 2026
- 29 Jan 2026
- 23 Jun 2025
- 14 May 2025
- 21 Feb 2024
Current obstacles
- Is space-made worth it?Varda must show medicines made in orbit are worth the cost compared with making them on Earth.
Physics limits
- Space is only nearly weightlessDrag, thrusters and the craft's own rotation leave residual accelerations of about a millionth of Earth's gravity. Very slow processes like crystal growth can still be disturbed.
- Getting product back costs a heat shield each timeAt about 7.5 km/s each kilogram carries some 30 MJ of energy to lose in reentry. The shield, parachute and capsule far outweigh the grams of product inside.
- Diffusion is slow, so batches take timeWithout convection, molecules only drift by diffusion, which takes hours to days per millimetre-scale crystal. Output per flight stays small.
How it works
Orbit
A factory in a small capsule
A capsule under a metre wide rides on a satellite bus. In weightlessness, no convection or settling means crystals and mixtures form differently than on Earth.
Reentry
Falls back at hypersonic speed
The capsule separates and reenters at around Mach 25 behind a heat shield, which also makes it a test vehicle for hypersonic research.
Landing
Parachute into the desert
A parachute lowers it to a range in Utah or Australia's Koonibba, where the product is recovered.
Update log
Mon 18 May
- Minor: BlogTest
Thu 29 Jan
- Minor: BlogTest
Mon 23 Jun 2025
- Minor: BlogHardware
Wed 14 May 2025
- Minor: BlogTest
Wed 21 Feb 2024
- Major: PressTest
About Varda Space Industries
Varda Space Industries
Capsules that make medicines in orbit
Varda flies small robot capsules that make things in zero gravity, starting with drug crystals, then fall back to Earth at very high speed. The US military also uses them to test hypersonic flight.
- W-1 grew crystals of the HIV drug ritonavir in orbit and landed in Utah in Feb 2024, the first FAA-licensed commercial landing of its kind.
- Later capsules have landed in South Australia.
- Raised a $187M Series C in 2025.
- Founded
- 20206 yrs
- Headquarters
- United States
- Status
- Private
- Valuation
- private
- Raised
- $187M1 round
- Last round
- Series C · $187MJul 2025
- Works in
- SpaceflightIn-space manufacturingManufacturing
- Coverage
- 1 program · 6 updateslatest 18 May 2026checked 25 Sep
- People
- Will Bruey (opens en.wikipedia.org)Co-founder and CEODelian Asparouhov (opens en.wikipedia.org)Co-founder and President