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California-based Vast Space He has big ambitions. The company aims to launch a commercial space station, Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, which will allow astronauts to remain in space after the station is decommissioned. International Space Station (International Space Station) in 2030. By doing this, it is trying to move forward NASA Plans to develop low-orbit commercial space stations with partner organizations — but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for what it will eventually put in space: a station with its own artificial gravity.
“We know that in a state of weightlessness we can live for a year or so, and in conditions that are not easy. However, lunar or Martian gravity is probably enough to live comfortably for a lifetime. The only way is to survive,” says Max Haut, CEO of Vast. To find out is to build plants with industrial attractiveness, which is our long-term goal.”
Vast Space was founded in 2021 by 49-year-old programmer and entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, the creator of the peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet, as well as early and innovative networks. Cryptocurrency exchange Mt.Gox has now been shut down. In mid-December, Vast Space announced a partnership with… SpaceX To launch two missions to the International Space Station, which will serve as milestones in the company’s launch plan Its first space station, Haven-1, will be launched later in 2025. The missions, for which official launch dates have not yet been set, will fall under NASA’s Special Astronaut Missions program, through which the space agency wants to promote the development of the space economy in low Earth orbit.
For Vast, this is part of a long-term business strategy. “Building a site that artificially simulates gravity would take 10 to 20 years, plus an amount of money that we don’t have now,” Hout admits. “However, to win the most important contract in the space station market, the replacement of the International Space Station, with our founder’s resources, we will launch four people aboard (SpaceX) Dragon in 2025. Two people will remain on board Haven-1.” “Weeks, then we will return safely, to show NASA our ability to confront any competitor.”
Space for someone else?
What Vast Space is trying to do, by demonstrating its capabilities, is get involved with NASA Commercial destinations in low Earth orbit The CLD program is 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.
It was money It was initially allocated to three different projects: One from the aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which has since exited the program; A joint venture called Starlab; And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin tropical coral reefs. FAST does not have a contract with the US space agency, but it aims to one-up its competitors by demonstrating NASA’s ability to put a space station in space before others. The agency will choose which project station it will support in the second half of 2026.
In doing so, Vast is borrowing from SpaceX’s playbook. Not only did Vast Space attract some of its employees and design equipment and vehicles from them Elon Musk The company, too, is trying to replicate its approach in the market: to be ready before anyone else, by having technologies and processes already qualified and validated in orbit. “We’re falling behind,” Haut says. “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 common table placed next to a domed window about a meter high. On board, approximately 425 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, a technology that was first tested during Polaris Dawn Assignment in fall 2024.
