California-based Vast Space have big ambitions. The company aims to launch a commercial space station, the Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, allowing astronauts to remain in space after the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030 In doing so, it will try to tap into NASA’s plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations — but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for that it will eventually be placed in space: a station that has its own artificial gravity.
“We know that we can live in weightlessness for a year or so, and in conditions that are not easy. However, perhaps lunar or Martian gravity is enough to live comfortably for a lifetime. The only way to find out is to build stations with artificial gravity, which is our long-term goal,” says Max Haot, Vast’s CEO.
Vast Space was founded in 2021 by 49-year-old programmer and businessman Jed McCaleb, the creator of the peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet, as well as the early and now defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox. In mid-December, Vast Space announced a partnership with SpaceX to launch two missions to the ISS, which will be milestones in the company’s plan to launch its first space station, Haven-1, later in 2025. The missions, still without official launch dates, will fall within 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 would take 10 to 20 years, as well as an amount of money that we don’t have right now,” Haot admits. “However, to win the most important contract in the space station market, which is the replacement of ISS, with our founder’s resources, we will four people on a [SpaceX] Dragon in 2025. They will stay aboard Haven-1 for two weeks, then return safely and demonstrate to NASA our capability before any competitor.”
Room for one more?
What Vast Space is trying to do by showing its capabilities is to get involved in NASA’s Commercial Destinations in Low Earth Orbit (CLD) program, a project the space agency started in 2021 with a $415 million grant to support the development of private low-Earth orbit. Earth orbiting stations.
The money was initially awarded to three different projects: one from aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which has since left the program; a joint venture called Starlab; and Orbital Reef, from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Vast has no contract with the US space agency, but it aims to outdo its rivals by showing NASA that it can put a space station in space before these others. The agency will select the project’s station in the second half of 2026.
In doing so, Vast borrows from SpaceX’s playbook. Not only has Vast Space pulled some of its employees and the design of equipment and vehicles from Elon Musk’s company, it is also trying to replicate its approach to the market: to be ready before anyone else, using technologies and processes that are already qualified and validated in orbit. . “We’re lagging behind,” says Haot. “What can we do to win? Our answer, 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 expendable resources for the crew’s personal living quarters, a laboratory and a deployable communal table adjacent to a dome window of about one meter is set high. On board, about 425 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, technology first tested during the Polaris Dawn mission in fall 2024 .