Kristen Smith
Varda Space Industries, LeoLabs and Anduril have announced a successful joint demonstration to track, monitor and report orbital maneuvers ahead of a hypersonic reentry. The test involved Varda’s W-3 vehicle, which returned to Earth on May 13 after performing a series of orbital maneuvers, according to a joint press release published Monday.
Real-Time Tracking and Integration
With cues from Varda, LeoLabs’ Global Radar Network tracked the maneuvers, and the data was integrated into Anduril’s artificial intelligence-enabled Lattice platform to provide distributed users with real-time situational awareness.
The companies see the capability to track orbital maneuvers in low Earth orbit as a “critically important component of space domain awareness,” providing early warning and attribution of potentially threatening activity. In line with the partnership, the three plan to expand the demonstration with LeoLabs’ new Scout radar, which could track a Varda capsule as it reenters at hypersonic speed. The data would again be ingested into Anduril’s Lattice platform to connect with government and defense command and control nodes.
“This is an important step in better understanding how we can push LeoLabs technology to adjacent mission sets,” said Tony Frazier, CEO of LeoLabs and a six-time Wash 100 Award recipient. “Tracking the on-orbit maneuvers of Varda’s W-3 at hypersonic speed and seamlessly integrating our Orbital Intelligence data into Anduril’s Lattice represents the critical ability to provide actionable insights to decision-makers at the point of need.”
Link to Golden Dome Initiative
According to a report from The New York Times, the May reentry was also designed to demonstrate how Varda, LeoLabs and Anduril could calculate the trajectory of a hypersonic missile, rocket or drone from space within minutes. At Varda’s headquarters in California, employees monitored the descent in real time as updates came from partners in Australia. The capsule landed on target in a remote part of the country, validating the ability of the combined technologies to detect, predict and document the reentry path. The demonstration coincides with growing interest in President Donald Trump’s $175 billion Golden Dome missile defense initiative, which aims to build a nationwide shield capable of intercepting rockets and missiles.
Varda CEO Will Bruey described the company’s hypersonic reentry testbed as the lowest-cost, highest-cadence platform to fly at speeds higher than Mach 25, calling it a “leapfrog capability that only America has.”
Anduril executive Gokul Subramanian said the rapid integration of LeoLabs data into Lattice demonstrated how an interoperable, low-latency networking and communications architecture can ensure operators have the right tools and information to execute their missions.
