Varda Space Industries

Varda Space Industries is an El Segundo, California company founded in 2021 by Delian Asparouhov and Will Bruey, focused on building the infrastructure to industrialize low Earth orbit — starting with pharmaceutical crystallization and advanced materials processing in microgravity.

Varda's core product is the W-Series: a family of free-flying spacecraft (not dependent on the ISS or any space station) that include a satellite bus, orbital processing equipment, and a proprietary reentry capsule built end-to-end in the company's El Segundo warehouse. The W-Series spacecraft is launched on a commercial rocket, operates autonomously in orbit while its pharmaceutical or materials processing equipment runs experiments, and then separates and reenters with product for recovery on the ground.

Through 2026, Varda has completed six missions: W-1 (reentered Utah Test and Training Range, February 2024), W-2 (reentered Koonibba Test Range, Australia, February 2025), W-3 (reentered Koonibba, May 2025), W-4 (new satellite bus + in-house heatshield), W-5 (second fully in-house vehicle, government payload), and W-6 (first 2026 launch, advancing autonomous hypersonic flight testing). Varda has also announced a research collaboration with United Therapeutics for biopharma applications.

Beyond biopharma, Varda's platform serves government customers as a hypersonic testbed for reentry vehicle and orbital flight testing. The company aims to make returning materials from orbit as routine and economical as shipping goods by any other means.