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Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The start-up making drugs in space, then sending them to Australia at 30,870km/h
When it comes to the future, you have to ask: are we there yet? For example, is it possible that space capsules are orbiting the Earth – while they make advanced drug compounds? And then the same capsules are returning to terra firma after travelling at 25 times the speed of sound into our atmosphere? Why, yes ... And when they return to Earth, they are returning to Australia? Yes, again. 'It's actually much less futuristic than it sounds,' says Will Bruey, CEO of Varda Industries, the company launching the drug-factory capsules. 'On average three SpaceX Starlink satellites are launched per day, and our spacecraft is simpler, quite frankly, than a Starlink satellite,' he says. And, while it's early days for California-based Varda, founded in 2021, the pace of launch for these capsules – whose journey takes them from the US, to low earth orbit, to a South Australian testing range for recovery – is expected to increase. The start-up is attempting to create a viable business of manufacturing drugs in space, where the lack of gravity unlocks the possibility of new, more effective – and more profitable – drug compounds that can't be made on Earth. Being in space, the limits on the scale of manufacturing are different to an Earth-bound enterprise – both in the molecular quality of what can be produced and, potentially one day, the scale of the production facility. For now, the company's future depends on how effectively and profitably it can formulate drugs – or at least the most effective primary active pharmaceutical ingredient – in orbit. When discussing drug production, Bruey compares microgravity (ultra-low gravity in orbit) to the effect that refrigeration has had on drug production since it was invented. Before refrigeration existed, people would have asked, how could it create value for pharmaceuticals? Today, refrigeration is a fundamental part of drug and vaccine manufacturing, shipping and storage. It reduces the risk of contamination and helps ensure the drugs are effective. Profitable drug manufacturing would be almost unthinkable without it. One day, space-based drugs may be discussed the same way. 'The way the pharmaceutical industry will think about [Varda] shortly is just another piece of equipment.' Even the name of the spacecraft – the W in Varda's W-series capsule – unofficially stands for 'Winnebago' (or caravan in American English) used in TV series Breaking Bad, which is itself a story about the remote, compartmentalised cooking up of drugs. 'Instead of going to the desert, we're going to space,' Bruey said. Likewise, Varda is hauling its equipment to a destination to make its batch, then coming back. 'So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll just be increasing the amount of Winnebagos that are going out to space and back.' 'There's a lot of low-hanging fruit and optimisation to be done in that paradigm.' Any drug with a formulation improvement worth more than $US200 a gram is viable for Varda to manufacture today. But Varda forecasts it can drive down the cost from $US200 to $US20 'pretty easily by just making our systems more reusable'. To push lower than that, the company will construct a permanent station with manufacturing equipment that can be used for multiple drugs, Bruey says. Much of the science around drugmaking in space has been done. There have been numerous experiments on pharmaceuticals, for example, on the International Space Station. Varda hopes to have a space-made drug in humans by the end of the decade. In an era of sagging productivity, it's worth considering the value of genre-melding new ventures. The question is: how much demand is there for a service that is new to the world? And on Earth – in Australia – how many re-entries could we see? Adelaide-based company, Southern Launch, was formed in 2017 as a spaceport operator providing launch services. It has since begun offering orbital re-entry services for customers like Varda. Their range, at Koonibba in South Australia, enjoys clearer skies with less air traffic than test ranges in the US, giving more flexibility to Varda and other clients, Southern Launch says. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the missions conducted for Varda so far, 'mark an incredible step forward for Australia as the global landing site for re-entries and the in-space manufactured goods the capsules carry.' Investing in an unproven business model is riskier than investing in say, inner city residential property. But Bruey sees Varda as carving out a niche that can expand as demand grows. 'Basically, there's only four fundamental forces of physics, and gravity is one of them, and we have a knob on [it], and no other company does.' (If you're wondering, the three other forces are: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Bruey knows about physics because he studied the subject at Cornell University before founding a couple of companies and working at Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bruey then met up with Delian Asparouhov, who was looking to invest in a company that could do this work. Asparouhov was looking for someone with Bruey's background and who 'was willing to drop everything and go on this adventure'. Varda now has backing from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. It has raised $US187 million in a new funding round this month, bringing the total capital raised to $US329 million. The bet that money can be made by low-orbit manufacturing has caught the attention of SpaceX, which reportedly has plans to get into the space-drug game by manufacturing too. Elon Musk's company plans to use its massive – and recently unlucky – Starship rocket for the purpose, according to Bloomberg. Sources close to Varda call the report about SpaceX's plan, called Starfall, a 'validation' of Varda's business model. Like SpaceX, Varda's goal isn't science, it's business: advanced, space-tech business, with the potential to unlock a huge new market that could one day involve large in-orbit factories. The in-space manufacturing market could be worth $US10 billion in five years, according to McKinsey. But exploiting a fundamental force of physics for profit comes with some hard realities. If you send the capsule into space, you must find a reliable place to recover the spacecraft – closing the loop on the production process. That's where Australia comes in. Varda's first craft W-1, launched in June 2023, was due to return in July, but instead got delayed as the company sought permission for the landing in Utah. It remained in orbit for eight months while the details of a new license were resolved between government authorities. While W-1 was in orbit, Varda reached out to Australia's space industry, looking for reliable space return services. W-1's February 2024 return coincided with Varda being granted a 'Part 450 re-entry license' from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation, part of a new process to accommodate repeated missions common in commercial space. Varda now has a FAA license which allows the company to launch and re-enter a craft without spelling out the identical parameters of the mission on repeated applications. When Varda's W-2 landed in South Australia, Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency said it highlighted 'the opportunity for Australia to become a responsible launch and return hub for the global space community, capitalising off the geographic advantages of our expansive continent.' Unlike crewed missions, which must gently skim into the atmosphere without burning up to bring humans safely home, Varda's missions comes in 'ballistically, as if it's like a missile'. In that phase, the Winnebagos achieve Mach 25, twenty-five times the speed of sound, or 30,870 kilometres per hour. Varda has attached a camera to the capsule to capture the dramatic re-entry footage, which looks something like a gas log on overdrive. In space. The pink glow you see is plasma, Bruey says, from the capsule moving so fast and creating so much heat 'it's literally ripping the molecules in the atmosphere apart and ripping away their electrons'. 'The streaks of what looks like fire is the heat shield 'ablating', that is the little pieces coming off intentionally to take away the heat, shedding it from the spacecraft.' So far, Varda has created a crystal form of an HIV drug ritonavir in space. It has research collaborations with large pharma brands, whose names Varda would not give, citing non-disclosure agreements. W-2 and W-3 landed in February and May 2025 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. W-4 is currently in orbit. Varda says it is on track for four missions in 2025 – with plans to expand to a double-capsule mission in 2026. From there, the pace is expected to increase to a weekly pace. Veteran space industry observer and contributor Brett Biddington says Australia is 'well-suited to support the recovery of payloads from space' with a historical record that is 'unblemished'. 'Whether a viable business can be made just from recovery support is another question,' he says. He expects that the 'activity will be lumpy and sporadic' and can best thought of as a 'supplementary income stream' to one that is more reliable. Varda's plan isn't to create a new business alone, but the industry needed to support and grow the enterprise. With the capsules going up and coming back, we will soon know if Varda is successful.
The Age
2 days ago
- Business
- The Age
The start-up making drugs in space, then sending them to Australia at 30,870km/h
When it comes to the future, you have to ask: are we there yet? For example, is it possible that space capsules are orbiting the Earth – while they make advanced drug compounds? And then the same capsules are returning to terra firma after travelling at 25 times the speed of sound into our atmosphere? Why, yes ... And when they return to Earth, they are returning to Australia? Yes, again. 'It's actually much less futuristic than it sounds,' says Will Bruey, CEO of Varda Industries, the company launching the drug-factory capsules. 'On average three SpaceX Starlink satellites are launched per day, and our spacecraft is simpler, quite frankly, than a Starlink satellite,' he says. And, while it's early days for California-based Varda, founded in 2021, the pace of launch for these capsules – whose journey takes them from the US, to low earth orbit, to a South Australian testing range for recovery – is expected to increase. The start-up is attempting to create a viable business of manufacturing drugs in space, where the lack of gravity unlocks the possibility of new, more effective – and more profitable – drug compounds that can't be made on Earth. Being in space, the limits on the scale of manufacturing are different to an Earth-bound enterprise – both in the molecular quality of what can be produced and, potentially one day, the scale of the production facility. For now, the company's future depends on how effectively and profitably it can formulate drugs – or at least the most effective primary active pharmaceutical ingredient – in orbit. When discussing drug production, Bruey compares microgravity (ultra-low gravity in orbit) to the effect that refrigeration has had on drug production since it was invented. Before refrigeration existed, people would have asked, how could it create value for pharmaceuticals? Today, refrigeration is a fundamental part of drug and vaccine manufacturing, shipping and storage. It reduces the risk of contamination and helps ensure the drugs are effective. Profitable drug manufacturing would be almost unthinkable without it. One day, space-based drugs may be discussed the same way. 'The way the pharmaceutical industry will think about [Varda] shortly is just another piece of equipment.' Even the name of the spacecraft – the W in Varda's W-series capsule – unofficially stands for 'Winnebago' (or caravan in American English) used in TV series Breaking Bad, which is itself a story about the remote, compartmentalised cooking up of drugs. 'Instead of going to the desert, we're going to space,' Bruey said. Likewise, Varda is hauling its equipment to a destination to make its batch, then coming back. 'So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll just be increasing the amount of Winnebagos that are going out to space and back.' 'There's a lot of low-hanging fruit and optimisation to be done in that paradigm.' Any drug with a formulation improvement worth more than $US200 a gram is viable for Varda to manufacture today. But Varda forecasts it can drive down the cost from $US200 to $US20 'pretty easily by just making our systems more reusable'. To push lower than that, the company will construct a permanent station with manufacturing equipment that can be used for multiple drugs, Bruey says. Much of the science around drugmaking in space has been done. There have been numerous experiments on pharmaceuticals, for example, on the International Space Station. Varda hopes to have a space-made drug in humans by the end of the decade. In an era of sagging productivity, it's worth considering the value of genre-melding new ventures. The question is: how much demand is there for a service that is new to the world? And on Earth – in Australia – how many re-entries could we see? Adelaide-based company, Southern Launch, was formed in 2017 as a spaceport operator providing launch services. It has since begun offering orbital re-entry services for customers like Varda. Their range, at Koonibba in South Australia, enjoys clearer skies with less air traffic than test ranges in the US, giving more flexibility to Varda and other clients, Southern Launch says. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the missions conducted for Varda so far, 'mark an incredible step forward for Australia as the global landing site for re-entries and the in-space manufactured goods the capsules carry.' Investing in an unproven business model is riskier than investing in say, inner city residential property. But Bruey sees Varda as carving out a niche that can expand as demand grows. 'Basically, there's only four fundamental forces of physics, and gravity is one of them, and we have a knob on [it], and no other company does.' (If you're wondering, the three other forces are: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Bruey knows about physics because he studied the subject at Cornell University before founding a couple of companies and working at Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bruey then met up with Delian Asparouhov, who was looking to invest in a company that could do this work. Asparouhov was looking for someone with Bruey's background and who 'was willing to drop everything and go on this adventure'. Varda now has backing from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. It has raised $US187 million in a new funding round this month, bringing the total capital raised to $US329 million. The bet that money can be made by low-orbit manufacturing has caught the attention of SpaceX, which reportedly has plans to get into the space-drug game by manufacturing too. Elon Musk's company plans to use its massive – and recently unlucky – Starship rocket for the purpose, according to Bloomberg. Sources close to Varda call the report about SpaceX's plan, called Starfall, a 'validation' of Varda's business model. Like SpaceX, Varda's goal isn't science, it's business: advanced, space-tech business, with the potential to unlock a huge new market that could one day involve large in-orbit factories. The in-space manufacturing market could be worth $US10 billion in five years, according to McKinsey. But exploiting a fundamental force of physics for profit comes with some hard realities. If you send the capsule into space, you must find a reliable place to recover the spacecraft – closing the loop on the production process. That's where Australia comes in. Varda's first craft W-1, launched in June 2023, was due to return in July, but instead got delayed as the company sought permission for the landing in Utah. It remained in orbit for eight months while the details of a new license were resolved between government authorities. While W-1 was in orbit, Varda reached out to Australia's space industry, looking for reliable space return services. W-1's February 2024 return coincided with Varda being granted a 'Part 450 re-entry license' from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation, part of a new process to accommodate repeated missions common in commercial space. Varda now has a FAA license which allows the company to launch and re-enter a craft without spelling out the identical parameters of the mission on repeated applications. When Varda's W-2 landed in South Australia, Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency said it highlighted 'the opportunity for Australia to become a responsible launch and return hub for the global space community, capitalising off the geographic advantages of our expansive continent.' Unlike crewed missions, which must gently skim into the atmosphere without burning up to bring humans safely home, Varda's missions comes in 'ballistically, as if it's like a missile'. In that phase, the Winnebagos achieve Mach 25, twenty-five times the speed of sound, or 30,870 kilometres per hour. Varda has attached a camera to the capsule to capture the dramatic re-entry footage, which looks something like a gas log on overdrive. In space. The pink glow you see is plasma, Bruey says, from the capsule moving so fast and creating so much heat 'it's literally ripping the molecules in the atmosphere apart and ripping away their electrons'. 'The streaks of what looks like fire is the heat shield 'ablating', that is the little pieces coming off intentionally to take away the heat, shedding it from the spacecraft.' So far, Varda has created a crystal form of an HIV drug ritonavir in space. It has research collaborations with large pharma brands, whose names Varda would not give, citing non-disclosure agreements. W-2 and W-3 landed in February and May 2025 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. W-4 is currently in orbit. Varda says it is on track for four missions in 2025 – with plans to expand to a double-capsule mission in 2026. From there, the pace is expected to increase to a weekly pace. Veteran space industry observer and contributor Brett Biddington says Australia is 'well-suited to support the recovery of payloads from space' with a historical record that is 'unblemished'. 'Whether a viable business can be made just from recovery support is another question,' he says. He expects that the 'activity will be lumpy and sporadic' and can best thought of as a 'supplementary income stream' to one that is more reliable. Varda's plan isn't to create a new business alone, but the industry needed to support and grow the enterprise. With the capsules going up and coming back, we will soon know if Varda is successful.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The start-up making drugs in space, then sending them to Australia at 30,870 km/h
When it comes to the future, you have to ask: are we there yet? For example, is it possible that space capsules are orbiting the Earth - while they make advanced drug compounds? And then the same capsules are returning to terra firma after travelling at 25 times the speed of sound into our atmosphere? Why, yes... And when they return to Earth, they are returning to Australia? Yes, again. 'It's actually much less futuristic than it sounds,' says Will Bruey, CEO of Varda Industries, the company launching the drug-factory capsules. 'On average three SpaceX Starlink satellites are launched per day, and our spacecraft is simpler, quite frankly, than a Starlink satellite,' he says. And, while it's early days for California-based Varda, founded in 2021, the pace of launch for these capsules – whose journey takes them from the US, to low earth orbit, to a South Australian testing range for recovery – is expected to increase. The start-up is attempting to create a viable business of manufacturing drugs in space, where the lack of gravity unlocks the possibility of new, more effective – and more profitable – drug compounds that can't be made on Earth. Being in space, the limits on the scale of manufacturing are different to an Earth-bound enterprise – both in the molecular quality of what can be produced and, potentially one day, the scale of the production facility. For now, the company's future depends on how effectively and profitably it can formulate drugs – or at least the most effective primary active pharmaceutical ingredient – in orbit. When discussing drug production, Bruey compares microgravity (ultra-low gravity in orbit) to the effect that refrigeration has had on drug production since it was invented. Before refrigeration existed, people would have asked, how could it create value for pharmaceuticals? Today, refrigeration is a fundamental part of drug and vaccine manufacturing, shipping and storage. It reduces the risk of contamination and helps ensure the drugs are effective. Profitable drug manufacturing would be almost unthinkable without it. One day, space-based drugs may be discussed the same way. 'The way the pharmaceutical industry will think about [Varda] shortly is just another piece of equipment.' Even the name of the spacecraft – the W in Varda's W-series capsule – unofficially stands for 'Winnebago' (or caravan in American English) used in TV series Breaking Bad, which is itself a story about the remote, compartmentalised cooking up of drugs. 'Instead of going to the desert, we're going to space,' Bruey said. Likewise, Varda is hauling its equipment to a destination to make its batch, then coming back. 'So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll just be increasing the amount of Winnebagos that are going out to space and back.' 'There's a lot of low-hanging fruit and optimisation to be done in that paradigm.' Any drug with a formulation improvement worth more than $US200 a gram is viable for Varda to manufacture today. But Varda forecasts it can drive down the cost from $US200 to $US20 'pretty easily by just making our systems more reusable'. To push lower than that, the company will construct a permanent station with manufacturing equipment that can be used for multiple drugs, Bruey says. Much of the science around drugmaking in space has been done. There have been numerous experiments on pharmaceuticals, for example, on the International Space Station. Varda hopes to have a space-made drug in humans by the end of the decade. In an era of sagging productivity, it's worth considering the value of genre-melding new ventures. The question is: how much demand is there for a service that is new to the world? And on Earth – in Australia – how many re-entries could we see? Adelaide-based company, Southern Launch, was formed in 2017 as a spaceport operator providing launch services. It has since begun offering orbital re-entry services for customers like Varda. Their range, at Koonibba in South Australia, enjoys clearer skies with less air traffic than test ranges in the US, giving more flexibility to Varda and other clients, Southern Launch says. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the missions conducted for Varda so far, 'mark an incredible step forward for Australia as the global landing site for re-entries and the in-space manufactured goods the capsules carry.' Investing in an unproven business model is riskier than investing in say, inner city residential property. But Bruey sees Varda as carving out a niche that can expand as demand grows. 'Basically, there's only four fundamental forces of physics, and gravity is one of them, and we have a knob on [it], and no other company does.' (If you're wondering, the three other forces are: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Bruey knows about physics because he studied the subject at Cornell University before founding a couple of companies and working at Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bruey then met up with Delian Asparouhov, who was looking to invest in a company that could do this work. Asparouhov was looking for someone with Bruey's background and who 'was willing to drop everything and go on this adventure'. Varda now has backing from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. It has raised $US187 million in a new funding round this month, bringing the total capital raised to $US329 million. The bet that money can be made by low-orbit manufacturing has caught the attention of SpaceX, which reportedly has plans to get into the space-drug game by manufacturing too. Elon Musk's company plans to use its massive – and recently unlucky – Starship rocket for the purpose, according to Bloomberg. Sources close to Varda call the report about SpaceX's plan, called Starfall, a 'validation' of Varda's business model. Like SpaceX, Varda's goal isn't science, it's business: advanced, space-tech business, with the potential to unlock a huge new market that could one day involve large in-orbit factories. The in-space manufacturing market could be worth $US10 billion in five years, according to McKinsey. But exploiting a fundamental force of physics for profit comes with some hard realities. If you send the capsule into space, you must find a reliable place to recover the spacecraft – closing the loop on the production process. That's where Australia comes in. Varda's first craft W-1, launched in June 2023, was due to return in July, but instead got delayed as the company sought permission for the landing in Utah. It remained in orbit for eight months while the details of a new license were resolved between government authorities. While W-1 was in orbit, Varda reached out to Australia's space industry, looking for reliable space return services. W-1's February 2024 return coincided with Varda being granted a 'Part 450 re-entry license' from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation, part of a new process to accommodate repeated missions common in commercial space. Varda now has a FAA license which allows the company to launch and re-enter a craft without spelling out the identical parameters of the mission on repeated applications. When Varda's W-2 landed in South Australia, Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency said it highlighted 'the opportunity for Australia to become a responsible launch and return hub for the global space community, capitalising off the geographic advantages of our expansive continent.' Unlike crewed missions, which must gently skim into the atmosphere without burning up to bring humans safely home, Varda's missions comes in 'ballistically, as if it's like a missile'. In that phase, the Winnebagos achieve Mach 25, twenty-five times the speed of sound, or 30,870 kilometres per hour. Varda has attached a camera to the capsule to capture the dramatic re-entry footage, which looks something like a gas log on overdrive. In space. The pink glow you see is plasma, Bruey says, from the capsule moving so fast and creating so much heat 'it's literally ripping the molecules in the atmosphere apart and ripping away their electrons'. 'The streaks of what looks like fire is the heat shield 'ablating', that is the little pieces coming off intentionally to take away the heat, shedding it from the spacecraft.' So far, Varda has created a crystal form of an HIV drug ritonavir in space. It has research collaborations with large pharma brands, whose names Varda would not give, citing non-disclosure agreements. W-2 and W-3 landed in February and May 2025 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. W-4 is currently in orbit. Varda says it is on track for four missions in 2025 – with plans to expand to a double-capsule mission in 2026. From there, the pace is expected to increase to a weekly pace. Veteran space industry observer and contributor Brett Biddington says Australia is 'well-suited to support the recovery of payloads from space' with a historical record that is 'unblemished'. 'Whether a viable business can be made just from recovery support is another question,' he says. He expects that the 'activity will be lumpy and sporadic' and can best thought of as a 'supplementary income stream' to one that is more reliable. Varda's plan isn't to create a new business alone, but the industry needed to support and grow the enterprise. With the capsules going up and coming back, we will soon know if Varda is successful.
The Age
3 days ago
- Business
- The Age
The start-up making drugs in space, then sending them to Australia at 30,870 km/h
When it comes to the future, you have to ask: are we there yet? For example, is it possible that space capsules are orbiting the Earth - while they make advanced drug compounds? And then the same capsules are returning to terra firma after travelling at 25 times the speed of sound into our atmosphere? Why, yes... And when they return to Earth, they are returning to Australia? Yes, again. 'It's actually much less futuristic than it sounds,' says Will Bruey, CEO of Varda Industries, the company launching the drug-factory capsules. 'On average three SpaceX Starlink satellites are launched per day, and our spacecraft is simpler, quite frankly, than a Starlink satellite,' he says. And, while it's early days for California-based Varda, founded in 2021, the pace of launch for these capsules – whose journey takes them from the US, to low earth orbit, to a South Australian testing range for recovery – is expected to increase. The start-up is attempting to create a viable business of manufacturing drugs in space, where the lack of gravity unlocks the possibility of new, more effective – and more profitable – drug compounds that can't be made on Earth. Being in space, the limits on the scale of manufacturing are different to an Earth-bound enterprise – both in the molecular quality of what can be produced and, potentially one day, the scale of the production facility. For now, the company's future depends on how effectively and profitably it can formulate drugs – or at least the most effective primary active pharmaceutical ingredient – in orbit. When discussing drug production, Bruey compares microgravity (ultra-low gravity in orbit) to the effect that refrigeration has had on drug production since it was invented. Before refrigeration existed, people would have asked, how could it create value for pharmaceuticals? Today, refrigeration is a fundamental part of drug and vaccine manufacturing, shipping and storage. It reduces the risk of contamination and helps ensure the drugs are effective. Profitable drug manufacturing would be almost unthinkable without it. One day, space-based drugs may be discussed the same way. 'The way the pharmaceutical industry will think about [Varda] shortly is just another piece of equipment.' Even the name of the spacecraft – the W in Varda's W-series capsule – unofficially stands for 'Winnebago' (or caravan in American English) used in TV series Breaking Bad, which is itself a story about the remote, compartmentalised cooking up of drugs. 'Instead of going to the desert, we're going to space,' Bruey said. Likewise, Varda is hauling its equipment to a destination to make its batch, then coming back. 'So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll just be increasing the amount of Winnebagos that are going out to space and back.' 'There's a lot of low-hanging fruit and optimisation to be done in that paradigm.' Any drug with a formulation improvement worth more than $US200 a gram is viable for Varda to manufacture today. But Varda forecasts it can drive down the cost from $US200 to $US20 'pretty easily by just making our systems more reusable'. To push lower than that, the company will construct a permanent station with manufacturing equipment that can be used for multiple drugs, Bruey says. Much of the science around drugmaking in space has been done. There have been numerous experiments on pharmaceuticals, for example, on the International Space Station. Varda hopes to have a space-made drug in humans by the end of the decade. In an era of sagging productivity, it's worth considering the value of genre-melding new ventures. The question is: how much demand is there for a service that is new to the world? And on Earth – in Australia – how many re-entries could we see? Adelaide-based company, Southern Launch, was formed in 2017 as a spaceport operator providing launch services. It has since begun offering orbital re-entry services for customers like Varda. Their range, at Koonibba in South Australia, enjoys clearer skies with less air traffic than test ranges in the US, giving more flexibility to Varda and other clients, Southern Launch says. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp said the missions conducted for Varda so far, 'mark an incredible step forward for Australia as the global landing site for re-entries and the in-space manufactured goods the capsules carry.' Investing in an unproven business model is riskier than investing in say, inner city residential property. But Bruey sees Varda as carving out a niche that can expand as demand grows. 'Basically, there's only four fundamental forces of physics, and gravity is one of them, and we have a knob on [it], and no other company does.' (If you're wondering, the three other forces are: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Bruey knows about physics because he studied the subject at Cornell University before founding a couple of companies and working at Elon Musk's SpaceX. Bruey then met up with Delian Asparouhov, who was looking to invest in a company that could do this work. Asparouhov was looking for someone with Bruey's background and who 'was willing to drop everything and go on this adventure'. Varda now has backing from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. It has raised $US187 million in a new funding round this month, bringing the total capital raised to $US329 million. The bet that money can be made by low-orbit manufacturing has caught the attention of SpaceX, which reportedly has plans to get into the space-drug game by manufacturing too. Elon Musk's company plans to use its massive – and recently unlucky – Starship rocket for the purpose, according to Bloomberg. Sources close to Varda call the report about SpaceX's plan, called Starfall, a 'validation' of Varda's business model. Like SpaceX, Varda's goal isn't science, it's business: advanced, space-tech business, with the potential to unlock a huge new market that could one day involve large in-orbit factories. The in-space manufacturing market could be worth $US10 billion in five years, according to McKinsey. But exploiting a fundamental force of physics for profit comes with some hard realities. If you send the capsule into space, you must find a reliable place to recover the spacecraft – closing the loop on the production process. That's where Australia comes in. Varda's first craft W-1, launched in June 2023, was due to return in July, but instead got delayed as the company sought permission for the landing in Utah. It remained in orbit for eight months while the details of a new license were resolved between government authorities. While W-1 was in orbit, Varda reached out to Australia's space industry, looking for reliable space return services. W-1's February 2024 return coincided with Varda being granted a 'Part 450 re-entry license' from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation, part of a new process to accommodate repeated missions common in commercial space. Varda now has a FAA license which allows the company to launch and re-enter a craft without spelling out the identical parameters of the mission on repeated applications. When Varda's W-2 landed in South Australia, Enrico Palermo, head of the Australian Space Agency said it highlighted 'the opportunity for Australia to become a responsible launch and return hub for the global space community, capitalising off the geographic advantages of our expansive continent.' Unlike crewed missions, which must gently skim into the atmosphere without burning up to bring humans safely home, Varda's missions comes in 'ballistically, as if it's like a missile'. In that phase, the Winnebagos achieve Mach 25, twenty-five times the speed of sound, or 30,870 kilometres per hour. Varda has attached a camera to the capsule to capture the dramatic re-entry footage, which looks something like a gas log on overdrive. In space. The pink glow you see is plasma, Bruey says, from the capsule moving so fast and creating so much heat 'it's literally ripping the molecules in the atmosphere apart and ripping away their electrons'. 'The streaks of what looks like fire is the heat shield 'ablating', that is the little pieces coming off intentionally to take away the heat, shedding it from the spacecraft.' So far, Varda has created a crystal form of an HIV drug ritonavir in space. It has research collaborations with large pharma brands, whose names Varda would not give, citing non-disclosure agreements. W-2 and W-3 landed in February and May 2025 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. W-4 is currently in orbit. Varda says it is on track for four missions in 2025 – with plans to expand to a double-capsule mission in 2026. From there, the pace is expected to increase to a weekly pace. Veteran space industry observer and contributor Brett Biddington says Australia is 'well-suited to support the recovery of payloads from space' with a historical record that is 'unblemished'. 'Whether a viable business can be made just from recovery support is another question,' he says. He expects that the 'activity will be lumpy and sporadic' and can best thought of as a 'supplementary income stream' to one that is more reliable. Varda's plan isn't to create a new business alone, but the industry needed to support and grow the enterprise. With the capsules going up and coming back, we will soon know if Varda is successful.
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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket could be visible over Arizona: Where, when to look up
SpaceX launches have come roaring back to life in Southern California after more than a two-week break, giving space enthusiasts plenty of chances to once again catch a rocket soaring high above. The first of three upcoming SpaceX Starlink missions got off the ground on the night of Tuesday, July 15. Now, Elon Musk's commercial spaceflight company could soon get another of its Falcon 9 rockets off the ground from the Vandenberg Space Force Base to deploy more of the internet-beaming satellites. The launch site itself may be across state lines, but Arizonans could still have a chance to see the rocket itself soaring overheard. But it's important to keep in mind that rocket launches can be – and often are – scrubbed or delayed due to any number of factors, including poor weather conditions or unexpected issues with spacecraft. Check back with for any updates on the rocket launch. Here's what to know about the launch from Southern California, as well as when and where to watch it in neighboring Arizona: California rocket launches: SpaceX rocket launches have increased in California, and not all residents are happy What time is the SpaceX rocket launch from California? The launch is being targeted for 8:51 p.m. PT Friday, July 18, according to a launch alert from the Vandenberg Space Force Base. If needed, additional launch opportunities are available starting at 9:26 p.m. PT Saturday, July 19. Where is the next rocket launch from California? The launch will take place from Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Most launches from Vandenberg fly at a south or southeast trajectory. What is the next mission launching from Vandenberg? The spaceflight will make use of the company's famous two-stage 230-foot Falcon 9 rocket, one of the world's most active, to deliver 24 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. The altitude is low enough to allow for things like satellites to circle Earth fairly quickly. How to watch SpaceX Starlink launch livestream SpaceX will provide a webcast of the Starlink launch on its website beginning about five minutes before liftoff, along with updates on social media site X. California rocket launch could be visible in Arizona: Where to watch Because of Arizona's proximity to the launch site, there's a good chance people there can see the spacecraft streak across the sky, especially at night or very early morning. Here's a list of some possible viewing locations compiled by The Arizona Republic, a USA TODAY Network publication. Dobbins Lookout, South Mountain, 10919 S. Central Ave., Phoenix, Arizona Papago Park, 625 N. Galvin Parkway, Phoenix, Arizona Fountain Hills, a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, which in 2018 was designated a Dark Sky Community with little light pollution Superstition Mountains, located 40 miles from metro Phoenix in Arizona Cave Creek, a town in Maricopa County about 30 miles north of Fountain Hills, Arizona Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, 3400 Sky Harbor Blvd., Arizona, which has a parking garage that is popular for plane-watching Black Canyon City, an unincorporated community in Yavapai County, Arizona Any mountain park in Arizona , 14805 W. Vineyard Ave., Goodyear, Arizona , 2600 N. Watson Road, Buckeye, Arizona , 20304 W. White Tank Mountain Road, Waddell, Arizona , 6533 W. Phillips Road, Queen Creek, Arizona Monument Hill, a 150-foot slope on 115th Avenue, in Arizona What is SpaceX? Elon Musk, the world's richest man, founded SpaceX in 2002. The commercial spaceflight company is headquartered at Starbase in South Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border. The site, which is where SpaceX has been conducting routine flight tests of its 400-foot megarocket known as Starship, was recently voted by residents to become its own city. SpaceX conducts many of its own rocket launches, most using the Falcon 9 rocket, from both California and Florida. That includes a regular cadence of deliveries of Starlink internet satellites into orbit, and occasional privately funded commercial crewed missions on the Dragon. The most recent of SpaceX's private human spaceflights, a mission known as Fram2, took place in April. SpaceX was also famously involved in funding and operating the headline-grabbing Polaris Dawn crewed commercial mission in September 2024. SpaceX additionally benefits from billions of dollars in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense by providing launch services for classified satellites and other payloads. What is Starlink? Owned by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Starlink is a constellation of more than 7,000 satellites that provide internet service to customers around the world. SpaceX has spent more than six years delivering the satellites to orbit with a regular cadence of rocket launches from both Florida and California. While most satellite internet services operate from single geostationary satellites orbiting Earth at about 22,236 miles, Starlink is a constellation of thousands of satellites that operate from a low-Earth orbit, about 341 miles up. That allows Starlink's satellites to have lower latency and data time between user and the satellite, improving performance of things like streaming, online gaming and video calls. This article has been updated to add new information. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket may be seen over Arizona: Where, when Solve the daily Crossword
