Watch video from Varda’s return capsule as its comes back to Earth
I have embedded below video taken from inside the capsule of the commercial startup Varda from its release from the Rocket Lab service module throughout its descent back to Earth.
The capsule had been launched in June 2023, carrying equipment to manufacture HIV drugs in space and then return them to Earth for sale. Even though the company had begun negotiations with the FAA and the Air Force two years prior for landing that capsule in the Air Force’s test range in Utah, those agencies blocked its planned return in the September of 2023, and was only able to do it last month. This mission is demo flight, with three others now scheduled.
For the video, Varda included a window looking up outside the capsule, and a camera to film everything that occurred outside that window during descent, release of parachutes, and impact on the ground. It is quite fascinating, as you can see that the capsule initially tumbles, then as the atmosphere thickens its aerodynamic shape causes it to stablize with its heat shield at its bottom.
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I have embedded below video taken from inside the capsule of the commercial startup Varda from its release from the Rocket Lab service module throughout its descent back to Earth.
The capsule had been launched in June 2023, carrying equipment to manufacture HIV drugs in space and then return them to Earth for sale. Even though the company had begun negotiations with the FAA and the Air Force two years prior for landing that capsule in the Air Force’s test range in Utah, those agencies blocked its planned return in the September of 2023, and was only able to do it last month. This mission is demo flight, with three others now scheduled.
For the video, Varda included a window looking up outside the capsule, and a camera to film everything that occurred outside that window during descent, release of parachutes, and impact on the ground. It is quite fascinating, as you can see that the capsule initially tumbles, then as the atmosphere thickens its aerodynamic shape causes it to stablize with its heat shield at its bottom.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Too bad they couldn’t post telemetry alongside. Would love to have seen altitude, speed, and G-forces
Very cool! Did you see the “Photon flyby” starting around 8:30? It was apparently the part of the craft that separated at the beginning of the video. Here’s an image of the whole spacecraft:
https://www.rocketlabusa.com/updates/rocket-lab-completes-custom-built-photon-spacecraft-for-varda-space-industries/
“Too bad they couldn’t post telemetry alongside.”
Varda would have had to have pre-calculated altitude and speed over time, and from those you could derive G’s, presumably to keep heating and stress within some constraints.
So even if all that wasn’t telemetered in real time, it could be recreated. Accurately? Well, it hit the target!
Fascinating.
Do we know how much of the drug was on board?
Only been keeping up intermittently.
Apparently, the drug is subject to “polymorphism” when it’s crystalized on Earth, it can settle into two distinct crystalline states, which have differing bioavailability.
And, it’s the difference between having to prepare it for use as a sterile liquid injection vs. taking a pressed tablet.
(as far as I can tell, the government is the largest purchaser of this drug)
Sub-zero.
Now we know what all those sci-fi folks experience on the way from orbit to surface. The Shuttle re-entry videos I’ve seen are through the windshield; this is more of a passenger view. Easy to imagine the relief at getting through the frictional part of re-entry; like breaking through the clouds and seeing the airport. Made it.
Now what of the spacecraft bus…maybe have it get ultra-low pictures of the ocean as it burns up in turn.
Jason Lewis,
You asked: “Very cool! Did you see the ‘Photon flyby’ starting around 8:30?”
Yes! That was fabulous. It gives us an idea of the separation speed, as they travelled that far from each other in eight minutes, but it also shows us that the Photon separated on the Earth side, that it was lower than the reentry capsule.
I’ll bet that there is someone at Rocket Lab who said, “We thought we wouldn’t see that Photon ever again.” I said that to a friend of mine who had worked on Intelsat 901 when MEV 1 took photographs of it ( https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/02/26/photos-servicing-spacecraft-approaches-intelsat-satellite-high-above-earth/ https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/northrop-grummans-mev-2-successfully-completes-docking-to-commercial-satellite/#comment-1123992 ).
Thank you for the link. It helps to remind us that Rocket Lab provides services to its customers that are new to space operations so that they don’t have to have their own experts in the areas that Rocket Lab can cover.
Something else I noticed was that the edge beyond the window was browned during reentry, like the meringue on a lemon meringue pie. Rats. Now I’m craving pie, and it is a week until pi day.