SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. have joined the Orbital Transports partner network and will offer their Reentry Device (RED) product line in the Space Catalog.
The RED-50, RED-25 and RED-4U products are on-demand, payload return capsules that provide low-cost, autonomous, downmass capabilities from Earth orbit. The RED systems accommodate flexible payload configurations, precision reentry, and thermal management requirements to provide rapid return for LEO orbit manufacturing and experimentation.
The capsule-shaped systems are nominally capable of returning 6-50 kg of payload from space to anywhere within the contiguous United States. RED-25 can return payloads up to 25 kg from LEO.
The RED product line will be available through the Space Catalog, Orbital Transports’ digital portal for the smallsat industry showcasing some of the industry’s most innovative and reliable companies. Featuring smallsat buses, COTS hardware components, ground station services and mission operations software, orbital transfer services, hosted payloads, and satellite servicing and refueling technologies, the Space Catalog provides a convenient go-to resource to check out the latest and greatest that the smallsat industry has to offer.
Executive Comments
“The capability to put an experiment on a smallsat and return the research materials back to Earth at the end of the mission has generated great enthusiasm among NASA and academic research scientists,” said David Hurst, CEO of Orbital Transports. “It enables microgravity experiments with sample return for customers in the biotech, pharma, and space manufacturing sectors. We’re excited to make this whole new class of smallsat mission possibilities available in the Space Catalog.”
“We developed the RED product line to provide an on-demand, low-cost reentry device to reduce the barrier to access the LEO economy,” said Tyler Kunsa, Business Unit Lead of reentry capsules at SpaceWorks. “We view LEO as the next commercial frontier to develop novel materials, create new pharmaceuticals, support regenerative medicine, and collect on-orbit samples. Our RED product line fills a key gap in the LEO commercial business case by providing routine and high-cadence ‘downmass’ capabilities from orbit.”