IEEE Spectrum by Mark Harris 10/24/2023
Orbiting lab pioneers space-made medicines—and the red tape needed to landFive hundred kilometers above the Earth, a small spacecraft is waiting patiently for permission to return home. The autonomous return capsule, made by startup Varda Space Industries, of Torrance, CA, was meant to have landed in the remote Utah desert early in September.
It would have been the first commercial space company to return a drug made in space to Earth, in this case a few grams of the HIV and hepatitis C antiviral ritonavir. Instead, the satellite, about the size of a large trash can and code-named Winnebago 1, continues to orbit the planet at nearly 30,000 kilometers per hour.
The FAA may still regulate re-entry operations of US space missions, even in Australia.The delay has nothing to do with the satellite itself, which appears to be operating perfectly, and everything to do with an ongoing struggle between Varda and U.S. government agencies back on the ground.
According to a Varda public filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Winnebago 1 will now re-enter the atmosphere no sooner than January next year—at least a four-month delay in discovering whether Varda’s proof of concept space factory has delivered the goods.
This stand-off highlights the tension between regulators and commercial space companies in the U.S., which are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticisms of agencies responsible for overseeing private space missions.
Years in the planningVarda’s mission is to design and build the infrastructure needed to make low Earth orbit accessible to industry, beginning with pharmaceuticals that should be easier to make in microgravity conditions. Planning for Winnebago 1 began two and a half years ago, says Delian Asparouhov, Varda’s co-founder and president. It is the first of four planned missions that will use identical satellites, launched into space by rideshare partners such as Rocket Lab or SpaceX.
But while many thousands of private satellites have been launched on such commercial rockets, none have yet made it back to Earth in one piece. Virtually all satellites are designed to burn up completely on re-entry once their useful life is over, to avoid collisions with active satellites on orbit or risk damaging property or people on Earth. Varda was the first company to apply for a re-entry license for space-made medicines.
“We are absolutely trailblazers here,” Asparouhov tells Spectrum. “And you can imagine how difficult the coordination has been.” The first step was to select a landing site for the 90kg capsule, which would plunge through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds before releasing a parachute to slow for landing. The company settled on the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), two millions acres of desert controlled by the Pentagon, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.
More:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/space-manufacturing-varda 
