See private in-space manufacturing capsule’s historic return to Earth (photos)

A California startup’s successful reentry and recovery of an in-space manufacturing capsule led to some gorgeous photography.

Varda Space Industries’ W-1 mission ended on Wednesday (Feb. 21) with the landing and recovery of a capsule containing crystals of an anti-viral medication that were grown in orbit. The high-value drug, Ritonavir, is used to treat HIV and hepatitis C, and the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit offers a unique environment in which crystals of the medication can form “more perfect structures,” according to Varda.

Varda plans to pioneer the use of orbital manufacturing spacecraft such as this capsule to open unique pathways for engineering materials in space. “Processing materials in microgravity, or the near-weightless conditions found in space, offers a unique environment not available through terrestrial processing,” the company’s website states. 

Related: Private Varda Space capsule returns to Earth with space-grown antiviral drug aboard

The recovery made Varda only the third private company to recover an intact spacecraft from orbit, after SpaceX and Boeing.

Varda’s W-1 capsule launched in June 2023 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-8 rideshare mission and spent over seven months in space mated with a Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft that provided it with power, propulsion and navigation.

Varda will now transport the capsule back to its Los Angeles headquarters for post-mission analysis and will send the anti-viral drug to a pharmaceutical lab for study. 

“The Ritonavir vials onboard the spacecraft will be shipped to our collaborators Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization,” Varda wrote Wendesday in a post on X. “Additionally, data collected throughout the entirety of the capsule’s flight — including a portion where we reached hypersonic speeds — will be shared with the Air Force and NASA under a contract Varda has with those agencies.”

In addition to the photographs, Varda CEO and co-founder Will Bruey posted a video to X taken from aboard the W-1 capsule in which Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft can be seen falling to Earth after the capsule had separated for its return journey.

Varda’s W-1 spacecraft is the second high-profile capsule to make a successful landing and recovery in the Utah Training and Test Range recently. 

In September 2023, NASA recovered a capsule from the same range that contained highly prized samples of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu that were collected by the agency’s ambitious OSIRIS-REx mission.