California-based Vast Space He has great ambitions. The company aims to launch a commercial space station, Haven-2, into low-Earth orbit by 2028, which would allow astronauts to remain in space after the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. influence NASA’s plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations, but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for what it will eventually put into space: a station that has its own artificial station. gravity.
“We know that in weightlessness we can live for approximately a year and in conditions that are not easy. Perhaps, however, lunar or Martian gravity will be enough to live comfortably throughout life. The only way to know is to build stations with artificial gravity, which is our long-term goal,” says Max Haot, CEO of Vast.
Vast Space was founded in 2021 by 49-year-old programmer and entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, creator of the peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet, as well as the former and now defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox. Vast Space announced in mid-December a partnership with SpaceX to launch two missions to the ISS, which will mark milestones in the company’s plan to launch its first space station, Haven-1, later in 2025. The missions, no dates yet launch officials, will be part of NASA’s private astronaut mission program, through which the space agency wants to promote the development of a space economy in low Earth orbit.
For Vast, this is part of a long-term business strategy. “Building an outpost that artificially mimics gravity will take 10 to 20 years, plus an amount of money we don’t have now,” Haot admits. “However, to win the most important contract in the space station market, which is the replacement of the ISS, with the resources of our founder, we will launch four people on a Dragon (SpaceX) in 2025. They will remain aboard Haven -1 for two weeks, then return safely, demonstrating to NASA our capabilities before any competitor.”
Room for one more?
What Vast Space is trying to do, by showing its capabilities, is get involved in the NASA project. Commercial destinations in low Earth orbit (CLD), a project that the space agency inaugurated in 2021 with a grant of $415 million to support the development of private stations in low Earth orbit.
The money was initially allocated to three different projects: one by aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which has since abandoned the program; a joint venture called Starlab; and Orbital Reef, from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Vast does not have a contract with the US space agency, but he aims to surpass his competitors by proving to NASA that he can put a space station in space before everyone else. The agency will choose which project station to support in the second half of 2026.
In doing this, Vast is borrowing from SpaceX’s playbook. Vast Space has not only attracted some of its employees and the design of equipment and vehicles from Elon Musk’s company, but is also trying to replicate its market approach: being ready before anyone else, having already qualified technologies and processes and validated in orbit. . “We’re lagging behind,” Haot says. “What can we do to win? Our response, in the second half of 2025, will be the launch of Haven-1.”
Haven-1 will have a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters, a docking port, a corridor with consumable resources for the crew’s personal housing, a laboratory and a deployable community table installed next to a domed window approximately one meter high. On board, about 425 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, technology that was first tested during the Polaris Dawn mission in the fall of 2024.