LAS VEGAS — Varda Space Industries has signed an agreement to land spacecraft at an Australian range because it continues work to secure approvals to land its first spacecraft in Utah.
Varda announced Oct. 19 an agreement with Southern Launch, a spaceport operator based in Adelaide, Australia. Under the agreement, Varda’s spacecraft will land on the Koonibba Test Range northwest of Adelaide, a facility covering greater than 23,000 square kilometers northwest of Adelaide design to host suborbital launches and spacecraft landings.
Varda is developing a series of spacecraft intended to check in-space manufacturing technologies, with an initial deal with pharmaceuticals. After the experiments are complete in orbit, a capsule will return the materials to Earth.
Southern Launch said Varda will use the range as soon as its second mission, scheduled for mid-2024. “In-space manufacturing is the following evolution of humanity’s industrial capability,” Lloyd Damp, chief executive of Southern Launch, said in a press release. “We’re excited to be partnering with Varda Space Industries to bring this emerging industry to Australia through the Koonibba Test Range.”
Varda launched its first spacecraft, W-Series 1, in June on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 rideshare mission in June. While the experiments on the spacecraft are complete, the corporate has been unable to bring the capsule back yet as it really works to secure approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force, who operates the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) where the capsule will land.
The corporate had been working to bring the capsule back in early September but was unable to get Air Force approval or an FAA reentry license. “We got very, very close,” said Delian Asparouhov, co-founder of Varda, in an Oct. 20 interview.
There was no single specific issue that held up the reentry, he said. “It was ultimately a coordination problem amongst three different groups that had not worked through this operation before.” He added that there have been no safety concerns with Varda’s spacecraft or its ability to fulfill requirements for an FAA license.
An extra challenge is that Varda is the primary company to hunt an FAA reentry license through a brand new set of regulations called Part 450. Those regulations are intended to streamline the method but, on the launch side, have been criticized by firms for being difficult. Asparouhov declined to invest if the corporate would have been in a position to secure a license by now under older FAA regulations, “but I feel confident that if there had been 10 previous Part 450 reentry operations, it might have gone way more easily.”
The spacecraft, designed for a one-year lifetime, stays in good health in orbit as Varda works on securing approvals for the capsule to land. “But any day that you just’re in space, you’re just increasing the chance on the vehicle. And so obviously our preference could be bringing this back as soon as possible.”
He said the corporate is making progress on getting approvals for a landing at UTTR, including a recent technical interchange meeting with range officials to debate potential landing opportunities, but didn’t mention any specific dates being considered.
Those issues, he said, accelerated planning to search out other ranges for landing future missions, with some ranges, just like the Australian one, reaching out to Varda. The corporate expects to eventually operate from three to 4 ranges worldwide.
Varda might want to work with the Australian government to secure approvals for landing at Koonibba Test Range and will even still need an FAA Part 450 license. Securing range approvals must be “a bit simpler” in Australia since there are fewer competing uses of that range, Asparouhov said.