Varda Space Industries, Inc. announced the successful launch of its second orbital processing and reentry capsule, W-2, which lifted off aboard the Transporter-12 rideshare mission with SpaceX from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The W-2 capsule carries payloads from Varda partners, including a spectrometer from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and employs a heatshield with a Thermal Protection System (TPS) developed in collaboration with NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. These payloads are in addition to Varda's expanded pharmaceutical reactor.

AFRL leads the discovery, development, and delivery of novel aerospace technologies, and Varda is honored to fly AFRL's Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the Reentry Environment (OSPREE) payload on W-2. OSPREE is an optical emission spectroscopy system designed to record spectral measurements of the dynamic reentry plasma environment. The sensor will yield the first in situ optical emission measurements of the reentry environment past Mach 15 in history. OSPREE is the first DoD payload experiment to be flown on Varda's hypersonic testbed, which offers true reentry flight heritage for materials and sensors over Mach 25.

High-hypersonic flow conditions are impossible to replicate on the ground, and flight testing is the only way to advance our understanding of the unique aerothermal chemistry experienced by spacecraft on their way back to Earth. Additionally, most test vehicles are not recoverable and are often limited to lower hypersonic conditions that do not provide a complete picture of the environment with adequate heat loads, pressures, and plasma formation.

The Prometheus program, a partnership between Varda and AFRL, addresses a national security need to accelerate the ability to test and modernize high-hypersonic systems and reentry technologies through a low-cost, high-cadence flight testbed. AFRL recently awarded Varda a flight services Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract to fund and access flights through 2028.

"By partnering with the commercial space industry, AFRL can provide the Government S&T community with a novel, low-cost approach to iterative development. Prometheus fills a longstanding experimentation gap for the maturation of future reentry system technologies," said Dr. Erin Vaughan, AFRL Prometheus Lead.

"Varda is proud to leverage its flight-proven commercial reentry capability as a hypersonic testbed, which we hope will be a reliable foundation for advancing the hypersonic sector. Deepening our understanding of the reentry environment accelerates defense capabilities while also advancing commercial space," said Varda CEO Will Bruey. "As we grow the orbital economy, reentry will be as common as launch. Varda's first hypersonic testbed mission, through our key partnership with AFRL, is in service of that goal."

The W-2 capsule will orbit via a Rocket Lab Pioneer satellite bus and will reenter at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, operated by Southern Launch.

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