Varda Space Industries Successfully Reenters W-6, Validating Autonomous Navigation and Advanced Thermal Protection Systems The capsule landed safely within the designated recovery zone at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, operated by Southern Launch, marking the company's second reentry of 2026. Similar to Varda's previous missions with Department of War payloads, the W-6 mission was funded through the Prometheus program, a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and commercial space entities, which is addressing a national security need to accelerate novel science and technology experiments in the extreme hypersonic reentry environment through a low-cost, high-cadence flight testbed.