By Jacopo Prisco, CNN
An artist's impression of Haven-1, currently under construction by California-based Vast Space, which plans to send it into orbit in May 2026. Photo: CNN / Vast
The International Space Station (ISS) is one of humanity's greatest achievements, providing a habitat in orbit that has been occupied continuously for almost 25 years. Visited by almost 300 people from 26 countries so far, it is a shining example of international collaboration and a one-of-a-kind technological marvel.
But its lifespan is drawing to a close, and even though it has long outlived its originally scheduled 15-year mission, NASA plans to de-orbit the station around 2030.
The agency is working with private companies to transition to a commercial space station. A competition will select the best designs and one or more partners for an initial demonstration that will include a 30-day, crewed mission in space. Further down the line, NASA would essentially buy "station services" from a private contractor tasked with launching a modern ISS successor.
The entries for the competition are due to be submitted next year, but NASA is already working with several companies developing commercial station designs before the actual ISS replacement work begins.
Among these companies is California-based Vast Space, which signed a deal with SpaceX to launch what would be the world's first commercial space station - called Haven-1 - currently slated for May 2026.
The single-module design is a simple proof-of-concept meant to be in orbit for three years, to support four two-week missions performed by a crew of four astronauts each.
Sporting a "human-centric" design and a science lab capable of supporting microgravity research and manufacturing opportunities for technology including semi-conductors, Haven-1 would be available for both private and government missions, allowing Vast Space to gain experience for the much more complex undertaking of building an ISS successor, should it win the NASA competition.
"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," said Vast Space chief executive Max Haot. "That's really the race we are in."
Starting in July 2024, Vast built and tested a non-orbital version of Haven-1 in its facility in Mojave, California. Photo: CNN / Vast
'Not designed to be a luxury hotel'
Haven-1 would have a diameter of 4.4 metres and a habitable volume of 45 cu m, or about the same as inside a single-deck bus - about 1/8 of the ISS, whose habitable volume is 388 cu m. It would be launched into orbit using a SpaceX Falcon 9, with the first crew to follow a couple of months after the station reaches orbit, using SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket are pictured at Launch Complex 39A on May 21, 2020, at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Photo: AFP
The internal design includes a 1.2m dome window, a deployable communal table, a private sleeping space for each crew member and high-speed internet connectivity, provided by Starlink.
"It's not designed to be a luxury hotel," said 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."
Vast Space will participate in NASA's competition for an ISS successor. This is an artist impression of one of the modules of this hypothetical, multi-module station, currently called Haven-2. Photo: CNN / Vast
Since the announcement of the project, in mid-2023, Vast Space has grown from about 200 to its current 950 employees, Haot said, and has invested in its own facilities that are capable of not only producing the Haven-1 module, but two modules a year of the much bigger Haven-2 - the potential ISS successor that Vast is in the very early stages of planning.
The company finished building a "qualification" version of Haven-1 earlier this year - one that is not meant to fly and only used for ground testing - and tested the structure against pressurisation and launch forces, among other things. The company has also recently conducted tests with NASA at Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama.
At the same time, Vast started building the actual module that is meant to go into orbit, which is now in the final stages of welding, according to Haot. That will be followed by a process called vehicle integration, where all systems are put together and tested, before pre-launch operations are set to start in April 2026 ahead of the planned May liftoff.
"Our next big milestone will be to announce the crew of Haven-1 and its exact mission activities," Haot said, adding that the company's target customers will be space agencies - with a special focus on emerging nations that are looking to send astronauts into orbit for the first time.
It is also looking to private, self-funded individuals, Haot said, adding that a spot on board will be awarded, for an undisclosed but hefty price, to people who will be training "very seriously" for their role and engaging in "important work" in space.
Some of that work will likely happen in the station's science lab, which Vast has developed with commercial partners in mind. Among them is Florida-based space infrastructure company Redwire Space, which has already conducted research on the ISS with stem cells and cancer detection, among other things.
"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," said Rich Boling, vice president 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."
The International Space Station floats against the black backdrop of space adjacent to the glowing blue-and-white surface of Earth. It's due to cease operations by 2030. Photo: NASA
An increasingly crowded space
Vast isn't the only private company that NASA is working with to kickstart the development of private space stations: Starlab is a joint venture that includes aviation giant Airbus and defence contractor Northrop Grumman, and there's Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Texas-based Axiom Space, which in 2022 performed the first all-private crew mission to the ISS.
"It is good to see a variety of different stations emerge," said Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger, an architect and space researcher at 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."
Frederick Scharmen, an associate professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Morgan State University, who works on space habitats, appreciates that Vast is putting a focus on crew comfort 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 said.
However, running space stations is an expensive business, said 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 said, adding that the current ISS operating cost is about US$12 million (NZ$20.6m) per day, about half of which is transportation cost 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 US$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 did not disclose operating costs, but said it will have invested about $1b, a combination of private capital provided by its founder Jed McCaleb, who previously made a fortune in the cryptocurrency industry, and revenue from customers, by the time Haven-1 launches.
-CNN
