The vehicle is the second entirely Varda-made vehicle and carries a government payload.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Nov. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Varda Space Industries announced today that their fifth mission, W-5, successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California aboard the Transporter-15 rideshare mission with SpaceX.

W-5 is the company’s fifth launch overall, and fourth launch of 2025. The vehicle carries a government payload funded through the Prometheus program, a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and commercial space entities. Prometheus is addressing a national security need to accelerate the ability to conduct novel science and technology experiments in the extreme reentry environment through a low-cost, high cadence flight testbed enabled by industry providers. Previous flights funded through Prometheus include Varda’s W-2 and W-3 missions.

Dual-use flights leveraging commercial entities like Varda provide the reentry test community with a novel, low-cost approach to iterative hypersonic science and technology experimentation. The unique aerothermal chemistry of the reentry environment is impossible to fully simulate or replicate on the ground, and flight testing is the best way to advance comprehensive understanding of the reentry environment.

Varda’s W-series hypersonic reentry capsule is the lowest cost, most rapid, recoverable option to reproduce the most challenging hypersonic and reentry flight environments. Varda’s capsule enters the atmosphere at 18,000 miles per hour and hits Mach 25+ on every mission before landing by parachute on Earth.

“With W-5, AFRL and Varda again demonstrated that hypersonic flight testing can be done routinely and affordably,” said Brandi Sippel, Vice President of Mission Management at Varda Space Industries. “Each Prometheus mission helps expand access to the reentry environment, accelerating the science and engineering that define the future of hypersonic systems.”

The W-5 vehicle consists of three Varda-made components: the hypersonic reentry capsule, the satellite bus, which provides power, navigation and propulsion in orbit, and an ablative heatshield made of C-PICA. The entire W-series vehicle is produced at Varda’s El Segundo headquarters.

About Varda

Varda Space Industries is building the infrastructure for a thriving orbital economy, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical hypersonic reentry capsules. The company operates out of El Segundo, California with office and industrial production space and has office space in Washington, D.C. and Huntsville, Alabama. Follow Varda on X (@vardaspace), Instagram (@vardaspaceindustries), and LinkedIn.

Alex Pearlman: [email protected]

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