Aerospace technology company Redwire—which has partnered with Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly to test drug manufacturing in space—has opened a new 30,000 square foot research and microgravity payload development facility in Georgetown, Indiana.
The site, which is two hours south of Lilly’s Indianapolis headquarters, will become Redwire’s “global hub supporting accelerated demand,” the company said, as it expands its space-enabled R&D and manufacturing capabilities with an emphasis on biopharma innovation.
The facility features a payload operations control center, which can oversee real-time experiments from the International Space Station (ISS). It also becomes the operational site for Redwire’s subsidiary SpaceMD, which uses a microgravity environment to create innovations in biotech and other industries.
The Georgetown site will help shape the “expanding orbital economy that will drive the future of space development,” Mike Gold, president of Redwire Space, said in a release.
“The breakthroughs emerging from Georgetown will accelerate the development of the technology and capabilities that are enabling NASA to advance human spaceflight, drive life-changing discoveries for leading pharmaceutical and biotech partners, create new innovations in materials from semiconductors to fiber optics, and generally unlock the economic potential for commercial space stations,” Gold added.
Redwire, which is based in Jacksonville, Florida, has been in business for five years and employs 1,400 in North America and Europe.
BMS and Lilly have partnered with Redwire in separate experiments to find improved ways to develop and manufacture drugs. In 2024, BMS conducted a study on small molecules using Redwire’s drug development platform PIL-BOX. Also in 2024, Lilly ran a second set of experiments with Redwire to look for ways to enhance the development of drugs for chronic diseases.
Last year, when Redwire revealed that it was establishing SpaceMD, CEO Pete Canitto explained to Fox Business that PIL-BOX can more effectively grow the crystals in space that drug developers use to study their molecules.
“Because you’re actually in microgravity, you can grow a more pure form of the crystal that, when it is brought down to Earth can be studied and you can build a higher-fidelity model of the compound itself,” Canitto said.