Latest news with #Varda
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Rocket Lab (RKLB) Stock Is Soaring Today
Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ:RKLB) shares climbed about 8% on Wednesday after the company supported the third successful return of Varda Space Industries' W?3 capsule. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Signs with INTC. This marks Rocket Lab's second Earth?return mission in two months using its Pioneer spacecraft. The W?3 capsule touched down at Southern Launch's Koonibba Test Range in South Australia after 60 days in orbit. Since February 2024, Rocket Lab has managed three of four contracted W?series missions. The inaugural W?1 effort was the first private space?manufacturing return outside the International Space Station, landing at Utah's Test and Training Range. Each Pioneer spacecraft provides power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control for Varda's 120 kg capsules. Built and tested at Rocket Lab's Long Beach facility, the modular design uses in?house star trackers, reaction wheels, and composite structures to enable rapid re?entry. Delivering three missions in just over a year highlights our rapid?response capability, said CEO Sir Peter Beck. Varda's vice president of reentry testing, Dave McFarland, added that the pace demonstrates a reliable low?Earth?orbit manufacturing solution. Rocket Lab is now preparing its fourth Pioneer for Varda's next mission while advancing its Electron launch vehicle and Neutron heavy?lift rocket for future orbital services. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Rocket Lab (RKLB) Stock Is Soaring Today
Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ:RKLB) shares climbed about 8% on Wednesday after the company supported the third successful return of Varda Space Industries' W?3 capsule. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Signs with INTC. This marks Rocket Lab's second Earth?return mission in two months using its Pioneer spacecraft. The W?3 capsule touched down at Southern Launch's Koonibba Test Range in South Australia after 60 days in orbit. Since February 2024, Rocket Lab has managed three of four contracted W?series missions. The inaugural W?1 effort was the first private space?manufacturing return outside the International Space Station, landing at Utah's Test and Training Range. Each Pioneer spacecraft provides power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control for Varda's 120 kg capsules. Built and tested at Rocket Lab's Long Beach facility, the modular design uses in?house star trackers, reaction wheels, and composite structures to enable rapid re?entry. Delivering three missions in just over a year highlights our rapid?response capability, said CEO Sir Peter Beck. Varda's vice president of reentry testing, Dave McFarland, added that the pace demonstrates a reliable low?Earth?orbit manufacturing solution. Rocket Lab is now preparing its fourth Pioneer for Varda's next mission while advancing its Electron launch vehicle and Neutron heavy?lift rocket for future orbital services. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Varda lands third space capsule, carrying key hypersonic flight data
Varda Space Industries, a California-based, in-orbit manufacturing company, recovered its third reentry capsule Wednesday, providing new data to support the Air Force Research Laboratory's hypersonic research efforts. Funded by AFRL, Varda's W-3 capsule launched March 14 on Rocket Lab's Pioneer satellite, which provided power, communications and propulsion for the system. It landed May 13 at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. The Varda capsule carried an inertial measurement unit — built for the Air Force by Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorporated and designed to allow systems to navigate and maneuver without GPS. According to Varda, the W-3 capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere at speeds that exceeded Mach 25, considered an 'extreme' environment that can provide the military with new information about how systems perform in hypersonic conditions. 'The W-3 mission will provide unprecedented data to advance next-generation space and defense capabilities and continue to provide hypersonic environments to the reentry test community,' Dave McFarland, Varda's Vice President of Hypersonic and Reentry Test, said in a statement. Varda was founded in 2021 with a plan to send 'production facility' satellites to space and manufacture everything from pharmaceuticals to fiber-optic cables in a zero-gravity environment. Because the capsules it uses to return the objects to Earth travel through a hypersonic environment, AFRL and NASA have partnered with the firm to use those vehicles as high-speed, reusable testbeds. That application helped Varda secure a $60 million strategic funding increase in 2023 from AFRL, NASA and several private investors. Last November, AFRL awarded the company a four-year, $48 million contract to continue testing military payload reentry through a program called Prometheus. Varda recovered its first capsule in 2024 in Utah and its second in February, also at the Koonibba Test Range. Varda's fourth spacecraft is in the midst of integration and testing in California at Rocket Lab's Spacecraft Production Complex. The company has indicated that its first two successful missions proved the versatility of its W-series vehicle to fly a range of payloads and have given it the confidence to shift its focus to increasing the system's launch cadence. 'For our pharmaceutical customers, increased cadence means we are able to more closely match drug development timelines,' the company said in a May 8 press release. 'For defense customers, it allows for faster iteration between tests. And for microgravity researchers, we can offer a faster turnaround time between the design of an experiment and receiving data to iterate on.'
Business Wire
14-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Two Earth Return Missions in Two Months: Rocket Lab Demonstrates Rapid Re-entry Capability with Third Pioneer Spacecraft for Varda Space Industries
LONG BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) ('Rocket Lab' or 'the Company'), a leading launch and space systems company, today announced its record turnaround of two Earth return missions in two months with its latest successful mission and Pioneer spacecraft for Varda Space Industries ('Varda'), a leading orbital pharmaceuticals and hypersonic re-entry logistics company. Rocket Lab successfully supported the return to Earth of Varda's W-3 capsule at 02:07 a.m. UTC on May 14, the third overall successful operation in the W-series of Varda missions. "Our Pioneer spacecraft consistently proves its rapid re-entry capability, versatility, and reliability, delivering critical mission functions that continually push the boundaries of space technology," said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Sir Peter Beck Share For the second time this year, Rocket Lab's highly configurable, medium delta-V spacecraft platform, Pioneer, delivered Varda's hypersonic re-entry capsule back to Earth. To date, Rocket Lab has successfully built, tested, integrated, and managed on-orbit and de-orbit operations for three of the four contracted missions for Varda. Rocket Lab's first mission for Varda, W-1, was the world's first space manufacturing mission conducted outside of the International Space Station. W-1 completed on-orbit operations in February 2024, positioning their re-entry capsule for landing at the Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City, Utah. The Company's second Pioneer spacecraft successfully entered Varda's W-2 capsule a year later, landing at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, operated by Southern Launch. The third Pioneer spacecraft for Varda's W-3 mission launched just 15 days after successful re-entry and landing of the W-2 mission on March 14. Each Pioneer spacecraft for Varda's W-series missions delivered critical mission functions for Varda's 120kg capsule including power, communications, propulsion, and attitude control. The Pioneer spacecraft was designed, built, and tested at Rocket Lab's Spacecraft Production Complex and headquarters in Long Beach, California. Rocket Lab's Pioneer spacecraft platform uses the Company's vertically integrated components and systems, including star trackers, propulsion systems, reaction wheels, solar panels, flight software, radios, composite structures, tanks, separation systems, and more. "Managing three successful missions for Varda in just over a year is a testament to our team's ability to produce tailored spacecraft for our customer's specific needs quickly and efficiently,' said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Sir Peter Beck. 'Our Pioneer spacecraft consistently proves its rapid re-entry capability, versatility, and reliability, delivering critical mission functions that continually push the boundaries of space technology. Varda's missions showcase Rocket Lab's commitment to groundbreaking advancements in space manufacturing and re-entry logistics, and we're immensely proud to be a part of these achievements." 'Varda's third successful reentry represents a new era in the commercialization of low Earth orbit,' said Dave McFarland, Varda's Vice President of Hypersonic and Reentry Test. 'The rapid succession of our missions demonstrates that this is a capability both Varda, and our partners can consistently rely on.' The fourth spacecraft in Varda's W-series is currently undergoing integration and testing at Rocket Lab's Spacecraft Production Complex and headquarters in Long Beach, California. + About Rocket Lab Founded in 2006, Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company with an established track record of mission success. We deliver reliable launch services, satellite manufacture, spacecraft components, and on-orbit management solutions that make it faster, easier, and more affordable to access space. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Rocket Lab designs and manufactures the Electron small orbital launch vehicle, a family of spacecraft platforms, and the Company is developing the large Neutron launch vehicle for constellation deployment. Since its first orbital launch in January 2018, Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle has become the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket annually and has delivered more than 200 satellites to orbit for private and public sector organizations, enabling operations in national security, scientific research, space debris mitigation, Earth observation, climate monitoring, and communications. Rocket Lab's spacecraft platforms have been selected to support NASA missions to the Moon and Mars, as well as the first private commercial mission to Venus. Rocket Lab has three launch pads at two launch sites, including two launch pads at a private orbital launch site located in New Zealand and a third launch pad in Virginia. To learn more, visit + Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the 'Securities Act') and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the 'Exchange Act'). All statements contained in this press release other than statements of historical fact, including, without limitation, statements regarding our launch and space systems operations, launch schedule and window, safe and repeatable access to space, Neutron development, operational expansion and business strategy are forward-looking statements. The words 'believe,' 'may,' 'will,' 'estimate,' 'potential,' 'continue,' 'anticipate,' 'intend,' 'expect,' 'strategy,' 'future,' 'could,' 'would,' 'project,' 'plan,' 'target,' and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, though not all forward-looking statements use these words or expressions. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the factors, risks and uncertainties included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the 'SEC'), accessible on the SEC's website at and the Investor Relations section of our website at which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this press release. Any such forward-looking statements represent management's estimates as of the date of this press release. While we may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so, even if subsequent events cause our views to change. + About Varda: Varda Space Industries is expanding the economic bounds of humankind by designing and building the infrastructure needed to make low Earth orbit accessible to industry, from in-orbit production equipment to reliable and economical reentry capsules. The company operates out of El Segundo, California with office and industrial production space. You can follow Varda on X (@vardaspace) and LinkedIn.
News.com.au
06-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
Meds are getting cooked and tested in orbit, and an ASX stock is part of the action
Space could make drugs purer and better Varda brews HIV meds in orbit, lands in SA Trajan's technology tracks pill effects for astronauts Medicine in space. Sounds like something out of Star Trek or Dune, but this isn't sci-fi anymore. It's the next frontier for real-world healthcare. Forget Martian hospitals, what's really getting scientists and investors fired up is how outer space, specifically microgravity, could help us make better and more effective drugs. The core idea is simple: when you float, your molecules do, too. In space, the rules of physics play out differently; gravity's grip loosens and under microgravity conditions, drug ingredients can, in theory, form in purer, more perfect ways. That's a big deal because the way a drug crystal forms can affect how well it works, how long it lasts and how easily it's absorbed by your body. If you've ever sat in a hospital chair for hours waiting for a drip to finish, you'll get why pharmaceutical companies are pumped about the chance to make treatments that are faster to deliver. Cooking real meds in space Varda Space is taking that vision and strapping it to a rocket. This California startup isn't chasing satellites or space tourism, it's using orbit as a lab. Varda is building space capsules designed to act like mini drug labs in orbit, running experiments that test how medicine behaves when gravity lets go. The company is betting that by manufacturing drugs in microgravity, they'll land back on Earth stronger, purer, and more effective. It's space as a service, with pharma as the customer. Varda's first major breakthrough came with ritonavir, the HIV treatment; as well as key ingredient in Covid-19 antiviral Paxlovid, both manufactured inside its W-1 capsule. W-1 circled the planet, made its batch, and then returned to earth, proving this whole idea might just fly commercially. Australia on the map And here's where Australia comes into the picture. Varda's follow-up mission, with a new capsule named W-2, ended with a dramatic touchdown in South Australia in February, at the Koonibba Test Range. After six weeks orbiting Earth, W-2 came screaming back through the atmosphere. This mission was also a key test of advanced thermal protection systems, gathering critical data on how heat shields perform during high-speed reentry. That fiery landing marked a milestone for Aussie space infrastructure, too, as Koonibba positions itself as a serious player in global aerospace. Trajan's tech joins the cosmic pharmacy But there's another angle quietly orbiting this story, an Aussie company that's not making drugs in space, but testing how they work once they're up there. The company is Trajan Group (ASX:TRJ) – a life sciences outfit that makes precision tools –and it's playing a crucial role in figuring out how our bodies respond to medicine in microgravity. The company's brand Neoteryx donated its Mitra micro-sampling devices to a recent space mission called Polaris Dawn. The Polaris Dawn mission was part of a private spaceflight program backed by billionaire Jared Isaacman, and flown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The study had astronauts self-collecting tiny blood samples after taking paracetamol in space. Three doses: one before takeoff, one mid-flight, and one back on solid ground. The goal is to figure out whether drugs behave differently when your body's floating in microgravity. Does it hit faster? Stay longer? Cause different side effects? And this isn't some clunky hospital kit. The Mitra device is sleek and portable, designed for people to collect blood from their finger or arm with minimal fuss. Perfect for space, where traditional lab setups are a no-go. The data from Polaris Dawn are currently being studied, and could lead to real breakthroughs in how we dose medication for future astronauts, or even patients on Earth with similar physical stressors. However, there's still a long road ahead. Space drug manufacturing and testing are still expensive, hard to scale, and wrapped in red tape. But while space tourism grabs the headlines, the real cosmic gold rush in the future might be in something far more useful: a smarter way to make and use medicine.
