First commercial space station is readying for launch

For the first time in human history, a space station built by a startup, not a nation, is set to enter low Earth orbit

- 

In 2026, a team of astronauts will float inside a glossy white cylinder orbiting hundreds of kilometres above Earth. But this won't be the International Space Station (ISS). It'll be Haven-1 — the world's first commercial space station, built by a private aerospace company called Vast.

Expected to launch in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, Haven-1 represents a radical shift in the way people will live and work in space.

"If we're able to do this before we win the NASA contract [to replace the ISS] using our own funding, we'll be not only the world's first commercial space station, but the only one of the expected bidders to have done that," Vast's CEO Max Haot told BBC Science Focus.

KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE

Vast's approach is fast, focused and unashamedly pragmatic. Instead of building a sprawling orbital laboratory, the team at Vast has designed a tightly constrained system that does just enough – safely. At 45m³ (1,590ft³), Haven-1 has roughly the interior volume of a small tour bus. Its life-support system borrows from earlier NASA tech, running on a simpler 'open loop' design like that used on the Space Shuttle.

Crew members won't stay for months here, like they do on the ISS. Instead, four astronauts will visit for roughly 10 days at a time, arriving on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Over Haven-1's three-year orbital lifetime, only four such missions are planned.

"The number one priority for Haven-1, as a demonstration of a minimum viable product space station, is safety," Haot says. "Number two is to make it happen within this unprecedented timeline. A rapid timeline also means lower cost."