I’d seen the story about a spacecraft making a drug in microgravity and planning to land it in the US.
However, the recovery of Varda’s capsule is on hold after the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force recently declined to give Varda approval to land its spacecraft in a remote part of Utah. TechCrunch first reported the FAA turned down Varda’s application for a commercial reentry license.
“Varda Space Industries launched its vehicle into space without a reentry license,” an FAA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday. “The FAA denied the Varda reentry license application on September 6 because the company did not demonstrate compliance with the regulatory requirements.”
What does this involve? They obviously can’t make any hardware changes to the spacecraft at this point. Software / flight profile changes? Modifications to ground support and recovery procedures?
Probably trying to find a way to safely crash it, hopefully in a way they can recover the space drugs.