Varda Space

Varda flies small capsules that spend weeks in orbit growing pharmaceutical crystals in microgravity and then return through the atmosphere at Mach 25 to land in the South Australian desert. Six have flown since 2023 and five have been recovered. The company holds the first reentry vehicle operator licence the FAA issued under Part 450, valid to 2029, so it can fly repeatedly without seeking permission each time.

The founders decided the defensible part was the coming back, not the manufacturing. Once capsules return routinely and cheaply, two businesses open at once: formulating drugs that crystallise differently without gravity, and selling the reentry itself as a hypersonic test environment to defence customers who need somewhere to fly thermal protection materials and sensors at Mach 25.

The defence half is the one demonstrably earning money. Six flights in, no drug has been commercially manufactured in space, and the first mission for United Therapeutics, Varda's first real pharmaceutical customer, is targeted for 2027, four years after the first capsule grew ritonavir crystals as a demonstration. The other unresolved item is W-4, the debut of Varda's own satellite bus and its own heat shield, the vehicle its economics depend on. After a problem with the propellant feed system its reentry was waved off in December 2025, and it was disposed of in orbit the following May without ever being recovered. The company calls that a great vehicle and a good set of data, which is a softer way of saying the first flight of its own bus could not be brought home.