Investing in Space: Regulatory hold up keeps Varda spacecraft stuck in orbit

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There's a small spacecraft zipping around Earth right now, but, unlike most satellites in orbit, it wants to come down. The only catch is that, so far, it's not allowed to.

Last month's Senate hearing on space regulations highlighted the challenge authorities face in regulating this industry, balancing safety while innovative technologies butt up against established practices in an evolving frontier sector. The hearing didn't feature a representative from Varda — the company behind that stuck satellite — but co-founder Delian Asparouhov echoed those sentiments in a recent conversation, albeit from a different perspective. 

Varda's first mission launched in June and was expected to be complete by July. My overly simplified version of its goals: Test to see if the spacecraft and all its systems work, manufacture a drug in microgravity, and then re-enter the capsule and recover it after landing at the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range. 

The launch went great, the spacecraft has been healthy, drugs were made, but the necessary license for capsule reentry has not been granted. 

So, for the last three months, Varda's W-Series 1 has remained in space while a trio of organizations – the company, the Federal Aviation Administration's space office (AST) and the Air Force – back on the ground try to resolve when it can safely return.

In Asparouhov's view, there have been "learning curves for all parties to understand how to assess this type of activity." While Varda has been talking to AST since the earliest days of the company, the FAA hadn't issued a reentry license by the time the mission was set to launch. But AST "encouraged us to proceed with our launch," Asparouhov said, "with the goal being that we would continue to coordinate that license as well as the use of a reentry timing with the range while we were in orbit.

"AST prefers to license only a couple days before a particular operation happens. That may make sense for launch but it's a bit more difficult for reentry," Asparouhov said. "And the upper atmosphere shifts, even on a very simple basis. How the stratosphere reacts to a reentry capsule in September is very different than February, which is very different than June."

Varda and regulators are "spiraling in on a point on a circle" to establish and sign off on a new reentry target, Asparouhov said. He explained that process generally starts with sets of days that work for the Air Force, which then goes to AST for licensing review, which then goes to the FAA's air traffic office for analyzing how to minimize the impact on airline routes, before then going back to Varda for reentry maneuver preparations. 

"It's continuous negotiation with continuous communication in a continuous feedback loop from a multi-party system," Asparouhov said, so there is "a lot of back and forth to the various parties that have never done it before together."

For future missions, Varda's added Koonibba Test Range in Australia as another potential landing site. But for this first mission, still in space, the range in Utah is the only "realistic" landing spot, Asparouhov said – so work continues to align the regulatory stars and return the capsule safely.

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