NASA wants to get out of the space station business and put it in the hands of, well, businesses. The agency is planning to send the International Space Station (ISS) to a fiery death through Earth’s atmosphere in 2031 so it can focus on its longer-term, farther-out (literally) goals such as going back to the moon. Elon Musk recently called for the agency to deorbit the station much sooner.
But agency officials are hoping humans will still have a future in Earth orbit through NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program. The initiative has commissioned private companies to come up with their own flashy corporate solutions to in-space stays.
Those stations could house astronauts from the U.S. as well as other countries. Furthermore, both NASA and the space station makers themselves are banking on the demand of other customers—private researchers, tourists and companies such as pharmaceutical firms—to stimulate a space economy that’s sustainable with or without NASA money.
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The program follows a model similar to the one that NASA has employed to develop astronaut-ferrying spacecraft after the space shuttles retired: the agency has been contracting with private companies such as SpaceX to shuttle cargo and astronauts to the ISS rather than owning and operating its own space vehicles.
So far, NASA has partnered with companies on three projects to design space stations as part of the program’s first phase. A second phase is on the way, and at least one competitor is nipping at these companies’ tail fins.
An illustration of the planned Axiom Space Station.
Image courtesy of Axiom Space
Axiom Station
A company called Axiom Space has been awarded more than $100 million from NASA to develop its station. And NASA isn’t Axiom’s only partner: the company has paired up with a motley crew, from beleaguered aerospace mainstay Boeing to satellite industry giant Maxar to Build-A-Bear—the stuffed animal company. Since 2022 Axiom has been sending missions of private astronauts on SpaceX capsules to the ISS. Over its three trips so far, its travelers have completed 105 research activities in life sciences, materials science and advanced manufacturing. A fourth mission is in the works.
The company has also sent Build-A-Bears in Axiom spacesuits along with the private astronauts. Unsurprisingly, you can buy a replica of those gravity-defying bears at Axiom’s website.
Welding and machining of the space station’s first module is in progress, and Axiom plans to launch its Payload Power Thermal Module (the station’s version of a utility closet) to the ISS in 2027. After it’s been berthed there for a while, the module will detach and go solo into space, where it will eventually be joined by two habitable modules: an airlock and a research and manufacturing facility. Voilà: a space station, likely with human and inanimate ursine residents.
But the interior decor is the big buzz around this station. Axiom didn’t leave its aesthetics to engineers: it contracted with French architect and designer Philippe Starck, who has designed everything from a Russian oligarch’s superyacht to Fossil watches to the insides of New York City’s Paramount Hotel. With his creative touch, Axiom Station will have tufted, organic-looking walls embedded with color-switching LEDs.
Starck has said he envisions the environment like an egg, with materials and a color scheme meant to evoke the universe’s fetushood—which, of course, invokes the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but hopefully not the travails of its protagonist. The shifting LEDs are also meant to blur the view of the outside universe with the station’s interior. Or, as Starck’s website puts it, “just as all the shades of lights and colors of day and night, the egg will also live to the mood and biorhythm of its osmotic inhabitant.”
Fetal boarders will also have Wi-Fi, video and what Axiom has called “the largest window observatory ever constructed for the space environment.” Axiom’s press materials suggest the company is going after the luxury market; another of its projects, for instance, was a spacesuit collaboration with Prada.
A mockup of the Axiom AxEMU Spacesuit designed by Prada. The single AxEMU architecture is evolvable, scalable and adaptable for missions on the lunar surface and in low-Earth orbit (LEO).
Image courtesy of Prada / Axiom Space
Orbital Reef
Orbital Reef, the name of a planned home meant to bob safely in the ocean of space, is another of NASA’s phase one selections. The project, which as of 2024 had won $172 million from NASA, is perhaps the most explosive of the future space stations. Last year and in late 2023 NASA blew up prototypes of the Reef’s habitable module—called LIFE, for Large Integrated Flexible Environment—in what it called a “burst test.”
LIFE won’t have a stiff shell like other stations: it will inflate in orbit to three stories tall and 27 feet in diameter, and it will accommodate sleeping spaces for four astronauts, their science experiments and their exercise equipment, among other amenities. But NASA needed to find out how much pressure the habitat could handle before blowing, so it pumped it up until it burst apart in a spectacular show that resulted in a net of detritus that resembled a sea creature. LIFE reached 74 pounds per square inch in its test last year before it broke down—that’s more than twice the pressure in a car tire.
The Reef is a partnership between Sierra Space and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s cosmic company. Given the multipurpose nature of Amazon, Bezos’s most famous creation, maybe it’s no surprise that Blue Origin describes the Reef as “a mixed-use business park 250 miles above Earth.”
Amenities will include a medical center, robotics to help with future experiments, separate quarters for work and play and Sierra Space’s trademarked Astro Garden system, which looks like a hipster coffee shop’s vertical wall garden and could provide astronauts roughage (and the taste of home) on their journey.
Orbital Reef, if all goes as planned, could start operating by the end of the decade, focusing on science, research and tourism, in addition to accommodating governmental guests. With interior details handled by architecture firm Hassell—which has designed airport terminals, train stations, office buildings and zoos (mixed-use indeed!)—the station’s central feature is a social hub where astronauts can gather. At its core is a table made for sitting in microgravity. The table appears to have a circular base on which astronauts can hook their feet to stay grounded.
An illustration of the planned Starlab Space Station.
Starlab
Starlab Space is a joint venture between aerospace giant Airbus and a company called Voyager Space. Importantly, Voyager is majority shareholder in the organization Nanoracks, which helps scientists’ payloads make it to space and whose airlock, attached to the ISS, has deployed small satellites out of that station and into orbit. Now, as Starlab Space, these heavies, along with partners such as Mitsubishi—and MDA Space, which built the ISS’s robotic arm—plan to build their own space station, called Starlab. The team, which announced a European subsidiary in January, is gunning for a 2028 launch and already boasts a NASA allocation of more than $200 million. In February, the Texas Space Commission also awarded the company $15 million. And it has a former NASA astronaut, Tim Kopra, at the helm.
“The ISS was probably the most incredible vehicle ever built,” Kopra says. But rather than simply replacing that iconic station, he hopes to take lessons from that project and apply them to Starlab. One of those, he says, is the importance of international partnership—hence the multicompany cooperation. Beyond the core collaborators, the team also includes partners such as Palantir, which is creating a digital twin of the Starlab station—a software duplicate of the real deal, which allows engineers to model, monitor and predict onboard goings-on—and will use artificial intelligence to enhance operations (and hopefully not go rogue like HAL 9000).
Starlab will launch as a complete setup rather than doing so piecemeal, as was the case for the ISS. The ISS strategy, while necessary, was long and complicated, Kopra says. And it resulted in a kind of split architecture. “The way [the ISS was] built [was] with a bunch of very small cans,” Kopra says—akin to having a house with many small rooms. That meant that the things astronauts needed could be scattered across the space, requiring them to surf microgravity from room to room to perform a task. That’s not so for Starlab: “By having a large station like this, you can organize the equipment and inventory management in such a way that you minimize this extra time,” he says.
Today Starlab Space has a partial mockup of the station and plans to install a full-size one this coming summer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We consider [NASA], and NASA considers themselves, as an anchor customer,” Kopra says, “and we want to be close to where the expertise is.”
For now, the company is focused on pursuing customers from among the official ranks of astronauts from places like the U.S., Europe, Japan and Canada. Company leaders believe only a few tourists might be interested. “We don’t think that’s a very large market, but we certainly have the capacity to support it,” Kopra says. More likely customers are nongovernmental spacefarers who are scientists, whether from academia or industry—such as an investigator from a drug company that wants to develop new pharmaceuticals or someone who wants to experiment with semiconductors and maybe eventually do the manufacturing many miles above sea level.
To help make sure everyone, regardless of their cosmic goals, gets a good night’s rest, Voyager Space has partnered with hotel bigwig Hilton, which, as the thinking goes, knows about extended stays. “Hilton is sharing insights into designing comfortable and functional sleep environments; creating communal spaces to foster connection and socialization, elevating wellness-focused design to go beyond what has been delivered on the International Space Station; and supporting aesthetic design, wayfinding and human ergonomics for crew quarters and shared areas,” according to spokesperson Caroline Logan. She did not specify whether continental breakfast was provided.
Haven
Aerospace firm Vast isn’t currently part of the LEO Destinations program, but it does have existing agreements with the agency and is vying for a spot in the second phase of the private space station program. And the company may actually be the first to launch a station to space: it plans to send a prototype called Haven-1 to orbit in 2026.The company, along with SpaceX, recently reached out to scientific researchers seeking proposals for experiments about long-term human spaceflight.
Vast’s initial habitat will have a volume of 45 cubic meters, about the size of an average kitchen in the U.S., and will resemble an Ikea studio put together without colorful options. This stylistic choice makes sense, given the designer Vast had in its Rolodex: Peter Russell-Clarke, whose creative touch informed the designs of iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches.
Haven’s central feature will be a communal table that pops up and down, deploying on demand, like furniture in a space-saving recreational vehicle. A domed window that will be located right above, like a dining room skylight, will give astronauts that coveted view of space. Behind the table, where you might normally find a bookcase or framed photographs, Haven-1 will have a little laboratory. There, experimental payloads live in the wall, where they will look like cubed organizational bins. Additionally, astronauts will be able to stay connected using Starlink Internet.
But it’s Haven-1’s successor, Haven-2, that the company imagines will “succeed the International Space Station,” as Vast’s website puts it. The company, which is aiming to launch Haven-2 in 2028, designed it with 55 cubic meters of space—more like a master bedroom. But this module will be joined by others that will link together like Lincoln Logs. Vast plans to launch a new Haven every six months and to end up with a cross-shaped set of nine by 2032. At that point, experimental payloads will be located inside and outside, space vehicles will be able to visit, and astronauts will perform extravehicular activities. Those astronauts might include private types or official envoys from different countries. The Czech Republic and Vast have already signed a memorandum of understanding, a fuzzy document that nonetheless paves the path for putting Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda closer to that communal table.
Future astronauts of all sorts don’t yet know how—or if—any of these commercial habitats will shake out, what life will be like inside them, what mix of interests their inhabitants will have or if that mix will in fact prove sustainable. Given that the vehicles would be the first privately created and operated space stations, everything about them—besides which spiffy designers have had hands in their interiors—is unknown. First, designs, prototypes and flashy press release illustrations must be transformed into actual objects. Then those objects have to actually get to space. How much that will cost, how long that will take and whether there will be enough paying customers for any, let alone all, of them remain open questions—as does whether their bubble may someday burst like an overstressed LIFE habitat.
