Commercial firms team up to demonstrate hypersonic vehicle tracking capabilities

WASHINGTON — A new collaboration between commercial space and defense firms Varda Space Industries, LeoLabs, and Anduril successfully demonstrated advanced hypersonic vehicle tracking, the companies announced Sept. 8

In the demonstration, LeoLabs’ radar tracked the hypersonic reentry of a Varda Space Industries capsule that landed in Australia in May. Anduril’s Lattice software took the raw tracking data and used artificial intelligence to turn it into useful intelligence.

This test conducted by private firms comes as the Pentagon seeks commercial industry innovation to aid in the Golden Dome initiative, a program designed to detect, track and defeat adversary hypersonic missiles while they are in flight. Such missiles, which can travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5 and maneuver in unpredictable ways, represent one of the most challenging new threats to national security.

The Varda capsule, designed to manufacture pharmaceuticals in orbit and return them to Earth, provided a unique opportunity to simulate a hypersonic threat. Protected by advanced heat shields, the capsule reenters the atmosphere at speeds exceeding 18,000 miles per hour before deploying parachutes for a gentle final descent. The May reentry in Southern Australia was monitored from Varda’s main office in El Segundo, California.

Prior to its hypersonic plunge, the W-3 capsule performed a series of on-orbit maneuvers. LeoLabs’ global radar network tracked these movements, and the tracking data was then funneled into Lattice, an AI-powered software platform developed by Anduril that processes large datasets and provides rapid insights.

Option to traditional testing

Although the companies are highlighting the value of this technology for broad space domain awareness, the timing of the announcement and the specific details of the test highlight its potential military applications. “Regular, rigorous component and systems testing for defense modernization is incredibly important,” Varda CEO Will Bruey said in a news release.

Varda said its recoverable capsules, which enable repeatable, instrumented reentries, offer a lower cost option to traditional testing.

LeoLabs, based in Menlo Park, California, has been actively marketing its space-tracking radar systems for missile-defense activities and recently unveiled a mobile radar capable of being deployed on short notice for launch and reentry tracking. LeoLabs CEO Tony Frazier said the Varda demonstration was “an important step in better understanding how we can push LeoLabs technology to adjacent mission sets,” such as tracking hypersonic glide vehicles. The test showed how commercial radar data, he said, combined with AI-driven analysis could lead to faster and more accurate threat attribution.

A Varda spokesperson confirmed that the demonstration was funded with internal R&D and that the companies “expect to try again in the future.”