REDWIRE’S SPACEMD ANNOUNCES MISSION ON SPACEX’S STARFALL FOR PHARMACEUTICAL DEVELOPMENT, Aug 7, 2026, DC/online, 10:30 am ET

Redwire will host an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on August 7, 2026 at 10:30 am ET to discuss the announcement of plans to launch SpaceMD’s first commercial mission on a SpaceX Starfall flight in 2028 for pharmaceutical development.  The event is in-person at the Press Club’s Frank Holeman Lounge (13th Floor, 529 14th Street, N.W., Washington, DC) and livestreamed on YouTube.

Space Microgravity Development LLC or SpaceMD is a wholly owned subsidiary of Redwire “focused on leveraging the microgravity environment to create dynamic innovations.”

Participants are:

• Mike Gold, President, Redwire Space
• John Vellinger, CEO, SpaceMD
• Taylor Jordan, Director, Office of Space Commerce
• Gabriel Swiney, Deputy Director, Office of Space Commerce
• Paul Reichert, Former Principal Investigator, Merck Research Laboratories
• John Thompson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Space and Environment, Department of State (invited)

More information is in the company’s press release, which says (in part):

“SpaceMD’s first Starfall mission is planned for launch in 2028 and is expected to have the capacity to carry up to 32 of Redwire’s Pharmaceutical In-Space Laboratory (PIL-BOXes), making it the largest dedicated commercial microgravity research mission flown to date. Drug candidates selected through SpaceMD’s research initiatives will leverage the highly tailorable microgravity environment and mission duration provided by Starfall before returning to Earth for analysis, accelerating pharmaceutical development and other forms of commercial research.

“SpaceMD will develop a new variant of PIL-BOX, to contain and optimize research aboard the entire Starfall spacecraft, ensuring immediate value to pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology innovators, and academic researchers. This work builds upon hundreds of pharmaceutical and life sciences experiments and R&D that Redwire has flown and conducted on crewed systems from the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station (ISS).”