Varda's W-2 capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to land on Australian soil. (Photo credit: William Godwin, courtesy of Varda Space Industries.)
A saucer-shaped space capsule landed in remote Australia last week, marking the first time a commercial spacecraft has landed in Australia.
Varda Space Industries' Winnebago-2 (W-2) space capsule re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and landed in South Australia on February 28. In doing so, W-2 also set a world record by becoming the first commercial spacecraft to return to a commercial spaceport, according to a statement released by the Australian Space Agency.
The successful return of W-2 was a “significant milestone for the Australian space sector,” according to the Australian Space Agency.
Varda, the company behind the W-2, is an American startup based in California. The W-2 initially left Earth from California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 14 as part of the Transporter-12 satellite sharing mission, a project that sends satellites from various customers into space. The W-2 then spent 45 days in orbit carrying payloads from the US Air Force and NASA before landing at the Koonibba Test Range, operated by Australian aerospace company Southern Launch.
The W-2 weighed 265 pounds (120 kilograms) and carried a variety of technologies to aid in space exploration. For example, the W-2 carried Varda's Advanced Pharmaceutical Reactor, which could make drugs in space, according to a statement released by Southern Launch.
The space capsule was also equipped with a heat shield developed jointly with NASA and a spectrometer built by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The spectrometer, known as Optical Sensing of Plasmas in the ReEntry Environment (OSPREE), measured the environment around the capsule during its reentry at speeds exceeding Mach 25, which is 25 times the speed of sound, or about 19,000 miles per hour (31,000 kilometers per hour), according to a statement released by Varda.
The W-2 space capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere last month.
“We are pleased that W-2 has successfully returned to our planet and are proud to have facilitated important re-entry research for our government partners, thereby laying a strong foundation for the economic
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