Varda Space Industries is a privately held American space research company headquartered in El Segundo, California. Founded in January 2021, the company designs, builds, and flies spacecraft that process pharmaceuticals in microgravity. The company targets small molecule crystallization, which is difficult to produce in Earth's gravity, and brings those crystals back to Earth with their atmospheric reentry vehicle. Varda’s W-Series capsule is an autonomous free-flying microgravity formulation platform intended for terrestrial landing. The W-Series capsule reenters the Earth’s atmosphere at more than 30,000 kilometres per hour (19,000 mph) and reaches speeds above Mach 25. The capsule touches down on land via a parachute. The W-Series capsules’ heatshields are made of C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), a thermal protection material produced by NASA Ames Research Center. The material was originally developed at Ames, and the reentry of W-1 marked the first time a NASA-manufactured C-PICA heat shield ever returned from space. Varda’s W-1 capsule was the first commercial spacecraft to land on a military test range, the first to land on US soil, and was also the first spacecraft approved to reenter under the FAA’s Part 450 license. Varda's capsules facilitate the production of pharmaceuticals in space, leveraging the unique conditions of microgravity to create drug formulations that are challenging to produce on Earth. For instance, the W-1 capsule successfully crystallized a novel form of the HIV drug ritonavir, demonstrating the potential for space-based drug development.