Headquartered in the vast space of California Have great ambitions. The company aims to launch the commercial space station Haven-2 into low-Earth orbit by 2028, which will allow astronauts to remain in space after the International Space Station (ISS) retires in 2030. is trying to participate in NASA's plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations, but the most ambitious is Vast Space's goal of eventually getting into space: a space station with its own artificial satellite gravity.
"We know that we can live for about a year in weightlessness, and the conditions are not easy. However, perhaps the gravity of the Moon or Mars is enough for people to live comfortably for a lifetime. The only way to find out is to build a space station with artificial gravity, This is our long-term goal,” said Vast CEO Max Haot.
Vast Space was founded in 2021 by Jed McCaleb, a 49-year-old programmer and businessman who is the creator of the peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet and the early and now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox. Vast Space announced in mid-December that it was partnering with SpaceX to launch two missions to the International Space Station, which will be a milestone in the company's plan to launch its first space station, Haven-1, later in 2025. The missions, which still don't have an official launch date, will fall under NASA's Private Astronaut Mission Program, through which the space agency hopes to promote the development of the space economy in low-Earth orbit.
For Vast, this is part of a long-term business strategy. "Building an outpost that artificially simulates gravity would take 10 to 20 years and would require a lot of funding that we don't have right now," Haot admits. "But to win the most important contract in the space station market, which is to replace the International Space Station, with our founder's resources, we will launch four people on a (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft in 2025. They will stay on Haven-1 for two days weeks and return safely to show NASA what we can do before any of our competitors do."
Vast Space seeks to demonstrate its capabilities by participating in NASA's Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program, a project launched by the space agency in 2021 with a $415 million allocation to support the development of private low Earth orbits . Earth orbit station.
The funding was initially allocated to three different projects: one from aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which later withdrew from the program; Grumman Corporation, which later exited the program; a joint venture called Starlab; and Orbital Reef, from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Vast does not have a contract with NASA, but its goal is to surpass its competition by showing NASA that it can get a space station into space before its competitors. The agency will choose which stations to support in the second half of 2026.
Vast's approach is borrowed from SpaceX's approach. Not only has Vast Space attracted some employees and equipment and vehicle designs from Elon Musk's company, it's also trying to replicate its approach to market: doing it well before anyone else through technology and processes that are already qualified and proven in orbit. Prepare. . "We're behind," Haute said. "What can we do to win? Our answer is to launch Haven-1 in the second half of 2025."
Haven-1 has a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters and has a docking port, a corridor that provides the crew with personal living quarters for consumable resources, a laboratory, and a deployable communal table set at approximately one meter high. Next to the dome window. Aboard the space station, which is about 425 kilometers above the Earth's surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, a technology first tested during the Polaris Dawn mission in fall 2024.