The 'world's first space factory' has successfully been deployed

Varda's satellite launch is part of the company's test campaign to determine whether its satellite solution can be used to develop pharmaceuticals in space.

W-Series 1 Satellite has DEPLOYED!! pic.twitter.com/di13aAR1Je

— Varda Space Industries (@VardaSpace) June 12, 2023

The company was founded by ex-SpaceX avionics engineer Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Its goal is to enable the mass production of certain products from space. This will be enabled largely by the increased accessibility to space in recent years thanks to private launch service providers such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab. 

"From more powerful fiber optic cables to new, life-saving pharmaceuticals, there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space," Varda explains on its website.

Developing drugs in space

Varda's work builds on scientific research showing that protein crystals grown in space can form more perfect structures than those produced on Earth, where the formation process is adversely affected by gravity.

One example comes from research carried out by pharmaceutical firm Merck aboard the International Space Station, a report from CNNreveals. That study found that a more stable version of the active ingredient pembrolizumab, used in the cancer drug Keytruda, could be produced in microgravity.

Varda's first mission will focus on researching the in-space development of ritonavir, a drug traditionally used to treat HIV but more recently used in Paxlovid, an antiviral medication used to treat Covid-19.

Varda has also separately signed an agreement with the U.S. Air Force to perform hypersonic tests. The company's test rig will travel at a speed of Mach-25 during its reentry to Earth's atmosphere. The company announced in March that it had won a $60 million contract from U.S. Air Force STRATFI to use its re-entry vehicle as a hypersonic testbed.