The European company will provide first in-space testing for Cargo Turn Technology this spring if everything goes according to plan.
Germany’s Atmos Space Cargo announced today (February 5th) that its first Phoenix re-entry capsule will fly on SpaceX’s bandwagon 3 ride-share mission. According to a representative from Atmos, the Falcon 9 Rocket will launch a Bandwagon 3 earlier than in April.
“Our first test flight has been a relentless work done by the Atmos team,” Sebastian Klaus, CEO and co-founder of Atmos, issued a statement via email. “We are proud to be leading this mission at a very important moment for Europe. Our space industry needs disruptive innovation to compete on a global scale.”
Phoenix is designed to transport materials to Terra Firma and offers safe rides for a variety of high-value products made on track. Atmos sees the specific needs of this service in the biomedical field.
Related: See historic return to Earth with photos of Varda Space’s private space manufacturing capsule
“Life science research, particularly targeting monoclonal antibodies, stem cells, organoids and protein crystallization, offers unique opportunities for the universe. Issues repetitiveness and reliability,” the company wrote on its website. 。
“The solution is to provide a specially tailored return service for a very affordable and reliable life science with regular flights and short lead times,” Atmos added. 。
Phoenix descends to Earth in one piece thanks to technology developed by Atmos, an immense atmosphere reducer (IAD) that serves both as a heat shield and as a high-speed parachute.
The initial version of the capsule can carry goods up to 220 pounds (100 kilograms) to the earth, but future iterations will allow several tons of iteration to process. This means that, according to Atmos, it can transport large objects, such as the rocket stage.
The launch of Bandwagon 3 will begin off-earth testing for Phoenix. The capsule will carry four payloads on this mission, including a radiation detector from the German space agency DLR and a new bioreactor from the UK company Frontier Space.
ATMOS has three main targets during test flights. Collects on-track information from Phoenix and its subsystems, collects data from onboard customer payloads, and deploys and stabilizes capsule IADs during re-entry.
Phoenix is not expected to overcome the end of this debut mission, a company representative said. But no matter what happens, it will inform and improve future versions of the capsule.
Atmos is not the only company developing hardware to acquire goods from orbit to Earth. For example, California-based Varda Space has already successfully completed its own in-space testing.
Varda’s first mission was called the W-1 and ended in February 2024. This was a company’s craft (combo manufacturing and return capsules) landed in the Utah Desert, carrying spatially grown crystals of the antiviral drug Ritonavir.
However, Atmos said Phoenix offers unprecedented efficiency and offers more cargo per unit capsule mass than its competitors. And entry into the spaceflight sector will help promote innovation across the field, a company representative said.
“Promoting the promotion of reusable, affordable and reliable downmass is important for the success of orbital space development,” said former NASA assistant administrator Lori Gerber, a member of the ATMOS advisory board. It stated in a statement.
“The ability to return life sciences and other types of microgravity research, rocket stages, military spacecraft and manufacturing resources could be the next breakthrough in space transport,” she said. I did it.
