W-Series 1 (Space Factory)

2023: Putting the factory into orbit

In mid-June 2023, the American company Varda Space Industries successfully deployed the W-Series 1 space factory in near-earth orbit. This spacecraft became the first civilian space laboratory to experiment with drug components, and the object of research for the first mission was the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV and AIDS.

This is a particularly attractive proposition for drug developers who can use zero gravity conditions to crystallize biological proteins to analyze their structure and develop drugs that bind to them perfectly. When gravity is excluded from the equation, things like convection currents do not exist because there is no top to which heat rises. And the particles in the liquid do not form lumps or rise to the surface or sink to the bottom, as happens on Earth.

According to Newatlas, the W-Series 1 space-based laboratory is a production environment for both research and development and the production of valuable substances. In W-Series 1, surgical cleanliness can be maintained, the laboratory can also do such things on a microscale that simply cannot be achieved on the ground. On the other hand, the cost of a kilogram when launching spacecraft for June 2023 is plummeting thanks to private space companies such as SpaceX with their reusable rockets. When Starship launches, those costs will come down even further. So space activity is quickly becoming so cheap and affordable that it no longer needs to be seen as a treat for companies making things like drugs, superconductors or heavy-duty alloys.

The first space factory from Varda Space Industries launched on June 12, 2023 on a Falcon 9 rocket, and it is now in orbit. Over the next week, system trials will be conducted on it, and then, if all goes according to plan, commercially significant trials of an old HIV/AIDS drug called ritonavir, its heating and cooling will begin to study differences in crystal structure when growing crystals in space.

W-Series 1, the size of a yoga ball, will orbit at an altitude of more than 1,000 km for a little over a month, after which a retro booster will be launched, which will slow it down so much that it will fall back to Earth.

Falling in a vacuum of space to the landing site at the US Air Force training ground in Utah, W-Series 1 will accelerate to hypersonic speeds over 25 Mach or 31 thousand km/h. The atmosphere will slow and heat the W-Series 1 as the air starts to get denser. The device will remain in the hypersonic range above Mach 5 6.2 thousand km/h until it is at a distance of about 40 km from the surface.

At this stage, Varda Space Industries applied smart commercial thinking, because since the W-Series 1 will still develop hypersonic speed, the company created a proposal "entry into the atmosphere as a service." The service will allow various U.S. government hypersonic research programs to conduct critical tests in much more appropriate conditions than the world's most advanced aerodynamic tunnels at Mach 15.

At a time when the W-Series 1 will drop to the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner, its speed will drop to 270 km/h, and then it will be able to begin deploying parachutes for a soft landing. The harsh conditions of re-entry will not affect the crystal preparations on board, so it will look like a small parcel box from heaven. If all goes according to plan, then Varda Space Industries has planned a second mission for the end of 2023, which will already allow the company to work with commercial and government customers, as part of production and testing.

Varda Space Industries has plans for reusable space factory modules and is also already considering launching a production station that will be permanently in orbit. The reusable station will redirect materials, equipment and maintenance facilities to dock with it as needed. These measures have been postponed for the medium term, but the era of space factories has already officially begun.^[1]

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