Redwire opens new facility in Indiana to advance drug manufacturing in space

USA—Aerospace technology company Redwire has opened a new 30,000-square-foot research and microgravity payload development facility in Georgetown, Indiana, as it expands efforts to support drug development and manufacturing in space.

The company, which has partnered separately with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) and Eli Lilly to explore pharmaceutical manufacturing in microgravity, said the new site will serve as its “global hub supporting accelerated demand.”

The facility is located about two hours south of Lilly’s headquarters in Indianapolis and will support Redwire’s growing space-enabled research and development (R&D) and manufacturing operations, with a particular focus on biopharmaceutical innovation.

Facility to support microgravity research

The Georgetown facility includes a payload operations control center that allows Redwire to monitor and manage experiments conducted in real time aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

It will also serve as the operational base for SpaceMD, a Redwire subsidiary focused on using microgravity to develop new technologies and products for biotechnology and other industries.

According to Mike Gold, president of Redwire Space, the new site will contribute to the development of technologies that support the emerging commercial space economy.

“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 said in a release.

BMS and Lilly explore drug development in space

Redwire has worked with BMS and Lilly on separate experiments aimed at identifying new ways to develop and manufacture medicines.

In 2024, BMS conducted a small-molecule study using Redwire’s PIL-BOX drug development platform.

The platform is designed to support the growth and analysis of pharmaceutical crystals in microgravity.

That same year, Lilly conducted a second series of experiments with Redwire to investigate whether microgravity could improve the development of medicines for chronic diseases.

Last year, when Redwire announced the creation of SpaceMD, CEO Pete Canitto told Fox Business that the PIL-BOX platform could help drug developers grow purer crystals in space.

“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.

Redwire, headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, has operated for five years and employs about 1,400 people across North America and Europe.

The company is using its expanded capabilities in Georgetown to support research that combines space technology with pharmaceutical and biotechnology applications.