The International Space Station (ISS) is one among humanity’s best achievements, offering a habitat in orbit that has been occupied constantly for nearly 25 years. Visited by almost 300 people from 26 international locations up to now, it is a shining instance of worldwide collaboration and a one-of-a-kind technological marvel.
But its lifespan is drawing to an in depth, and regardless that it has lengthy outlived its initially scheduled 15-year mission, NASA plans to de-orbit the station round 2030.
The company is working with personal corporations to transition to a commercial space station. A competition will choose the perfect designs and a number of companions for an preliminary demonstration that can embody a 30-day, crewed mission in space. Further down the road, NASA would primarily purchase “station services” from a non-public contractor tasked with launching a contemporary ISS successor.
The entries for the competitors are due to be submitted subsequent yr, however NASA is already working with a number of corporations creating commercial station designs earlier than the precise ISS substitute work begins.
Among these corporations is California-based Vast Space, which signed a take care of SpaceX to launch what can be the world’s first commercial space station — referred to as Haven-1 — at the moment slated for May 2026.
The single-module design is a easy proof-of-concept meant to be in orbit for 3 years, to help 4 two-week missions carried out by a crew of 4 astronauts every.
Sporting a “human-centric” design and a science lab able to supporting microgravity analysis and manufacturing alternatives for know-how together with semi-conductors, Haven-1 can be out there for each personal and authorities missions, permitting Vast Space to achieve expertise for the far more advanced endeavor of constructing an ISS successor, ought to it win the NASA competitors.
“Our number one priority is to become an actual space station company — one that has a station in orbit, has sent people to it for a duration of time and has brought them back safely to Earth,” mentioned Vast Space CEO Max Haot. “That’s really the race we are in.”
Haven-1 would have a diameter of 4.4 meters (14.7 ft) and a liveable quantity of 45 cubic meters (1,500 cubic ft), or about the identical as inside a single-deck bus—about 1/8 of the ISS, whose liveable quantity is 388 cubic meters (13,696 cubic ft). It can be launched into orbit utilizing a SpaceX Falcon 9, with the first crew to observe a few months after the station reaches orbit, utilizing SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The inside design features a 1.2-meter (4-foot) dome window, a deployable communal desk, a non-public sleeping space for every crew member and high-speed web connectivity, supplied by Starlink. “It’s not designed to be a luxury hotel,” mentioned Haot, “but we believe that in every environment, if you feel better, if you can rest better, and if you can communicate better, then you can work better.”
Since the announcement of the venture, in mid-2023, Vast Space has grown from about 200 to its present 950 workers, Haot mentioned, and has invested in its personal services which are able to not solely producing the Haven-1 module, however two modules a yr of the a lot greater Haven-2 — the potential ISS successor that Vast is within the very early phases of planning.
The firm completed constructing a “qualification” model of Haven-1 earlier this yr — one which is not meant to fly and solely used for floor testing — and tested the structure towards pressurization and launch forces, amongst different issues. The firm has additionally lately conducted tests with NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
At the identical time, Vast began constructing the precise module that is meant to go into orbit, which is now within the remaining phases of welding, in accordance to Haot. That will likely be adopted by a course of referred to as automobile integration, the place all programs are put collectively and examined, earlier than pre-launch operations are set to begin in April 2026 forward of the deliberate May liftoff.
“Our next big milestone will be to announce the crew of Haven-1 and its exact mission activities,” Haot mentioned, including that the corporate’s goal prospects will likely be space businesses — with a particular give attention to rising nations which are wanting to ship astronauts into orbit for the first time. It is additionally wanting to personal, self-funded people, Haot mentioned, including {that a} spot on board will likely be awarded, for an undisclosed however hefty worth, to individuals who will likely be coaching “very seriously” for his or her position and interesting in “important work” in space.
Some of that work will probably occur within the station’s science lab, which Vast has developed with commercial companions in thoughts. Among them is Florida-based space infrastructure firm Redwire Space, which has already carried out analysis on the ISS with stem cells and most cancers detection, amongst different issues.
“Most of our initial activity aboard Haven-1 is expected to be a continuation of the pharmaceutical research and manufacturing we’ve been doing aboard the ISS,” mentioned Rich Boling, vp of Corporate Advancement at Redwire. “We’re excited to be a part of such an historic enterprise, which can move at the speed of business. We expect Haven-1 to be an effective platform for research and manufacturing, albeit one that initially is more constrained than the ISS in terms of space available for our payloads.”
Vast isn’t the one personal firm that NASA is working with to kickstart the event of personal space stations: Starlab is a three way partnership that features aviation large Airbus and protection contractor Northrop Grumman, and there’s Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Texas-based Axiom Space, which in 2022 carried out the first all-private crew mission to the ISS.
“It is good to see a variety of different stations emerge,” mentioned Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger, an architect and space researcher on the Vienna University of Technology in Austria. “From a design perspective, starting small, with a single-module station, is a feasible approach because you can test critical systems, complexity is reduced and it’s economical. But the bigger vision must be implemented in the concept from the beginning — starting a space station is like starting a village, what you choose as the starting point sets the path for the future.”
“Shuttle Silhouette,” from 2010 — with Haven-1 illustrated instead of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.” class=”image_large__dam-img image_large__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_large__dam-img–loading’)’ onerror=”imageLoadError(this)” height=”1971″ width=”3819″ loading=’lazy’/>Frederick Scharmen, an affiliate professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Morgan State University, who works on space habitats, appreciates that Vast is placing a give attention to crew consolation and crew autonomy. “The Haven-1 project puts people and their daily needs, which go beyond basic survival, back in the center of habitability and spaceflight,” he mentioned.
However, working space stations is an costly enterprise, mentioned Olivier de Weck of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We have done some research on commercial space stations and not only their technical feasibility, but also the logistical effort and economic viability — the math is pretty daunting,” he mentioned, including that the present ISS working value is about $12 million per day, about half of which is transportation value for crew and cargo to and from the station.
“In order to have any chance of viability, a future commercial space station will have to ‘land’ its annual operating costs somewhere in the range between $1-2 billion per year, corresponding to an annual cost of between $2.7 to 5.5 million per day, less than half the ISS.”
Vast didn’t disclose working prices, however mentioned it can have invested about $1 billion, a mix of personal capital supplied by its founder Jed McCaleb, who beforehand made a fortune within the cryptocurrency trade, and income from prospects, by the point Haven-1 launches.