Vast is one step closer to launching its first private commercial space station. The company recently completed testing of its Haven-1 qualification article in Mojave, California, and reported that it successfully passed its tests. The company’s current goal is to launch the flight article aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than May 2026.
During a tour of Vast’s facilities in Long Beach, California, with NSF’s John Galloway and D Wise, Vast gave insights into their plans to eventually win a NASA contract to allow their larger space station, Haven-2, to act as a replacement following the deorbiting of the International Space Station (ISS), which is currently scheduled for 2030.
“None of us are actual space station companies,” Vast CEO Max Haot said. “I don’t have a space station in orbit. I cannot have a crew go to it and come back. Neither have any of our competitors… so if we want to create this amazing future, we need to exist. To exist, we need to be profitable. So, to be profitable, we believe we need NASA as an anchor customer.”
In 2026, NASA will select partners to continue the United States’ presence in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through private space stations. Vast says it hopes to have Haven-2 selected as part of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destination Phase II Contract and that its advantage will be having had a space station already in orbit by the time of selection.
“If we don’t win [the contract], we don’t think we can even exist, so it’s a matter of survival,” Haot said. “Being realistic, how can we win? And the strategy we came up with is Haven-1. So, our thesis is, what if we actually build a space station, launch it in orbit, have a crew of four go to it, spend two weeks at least in the space station, and come back home safely…before the U.S. government makes their decision?”
Haven-1 is a single-module space station set to launch aboard a Falcon 9 as a proving ground for the future larger station. While not permanently crewed, Vast expects the station to host multiple missions during its useable lifespan of two to three years.
Haot noted that one way they plan to achieve the ambitious 2026 launch date involves extensive in-house manufacturing. This manufacturing occurs in three buildings at their 4,645 m² Long Beach facility, with additional manufacturing in Hawthorne, California. Their testing site in Mojave is the former test site of Virgin Orbit.
One of Vast’s three buildings at its Long Beach, California, production site. (Credit: D Wise for NSF)
“If you can outsource to the supply chain, machine shops, and so on, you should do it. So you don’t bottleneck our own internal department and only go in-house if you need a quicker timeline or it’s a complex part and you need to work quickly,” Haot said. “In the supply chain, using a [larger scale CNC] machine will probably take six months before we get the part. We knock them out in three or four days.”
This became critical when designing the main shell for Haven-1. The company began with a 40% scale model of the station, which allowed it to test different materials. Since outsourcing was not an option, Vast tried two different materials: stainless steel and aluminum.
“We dual path it, and we did both in parallel. That was November of last year, 2023 is when we developed it,” Haot noted. “In February, we stopped the work on stainless steel and moved the team to aluminum.”
The final design includes an ortho grid pattern located on the outside of the panels for strength, with the design tapered toward the bottom and growing before narrowing again toward the top. This was done with the design of Falcon 9 in mind.
NSF’s John Galloway (left) and Vast’s Dan Haot (right) inside the Haven Pathfinder article. (Credit: D Wise for NSF)
“The lower the [center of gravity] the better the launch,” Haot noted. “That’s why the propellant tanks are [towards the bottom] and not at the top…it’s right there where the [Falcon 9 payload] adapter attaches to it so the load is all concentrated down there.
“You’re transferring the load from the top all the way through the main structure…and then you have the fairing interface. If you look at the render of the inside, the corridor, the most dense area, all of the propellant — it’s all as low as possible. The common crew area is as forward as possible.”
Vast does not plan to have a permanent human presence on the station. Instead, a crew aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle will dock to Haven-1, remain for approximately two weeks, and then return home, with three or four different crew rotations flying to the station during the station‘s operational lifetime.
Haven-1’s qualification article before being shipped to Mojave, California, for testing. (Credit: D Wise for NSF)
According to Haot, the limiting factor for Haven-1‘s crewed missions is having consumables onboard the station when crews arrive. This is different from the ISS, which receives regular resupply missions.
“With the Dragon’s payload, you could only bring consumables for a few days,” Haot noted. “So if you’re talking about [crews staying on Haven-1 for] 40 days, the consumables are not coming from Dragon. They have to meet the crew there…so you can’t really use the cargo area in the back of the Dragon.”
Typically, items placed in the trunk require a robotic arm to remove them. However, Haven-1 does not have a robotic arm to conserve mass, simplify the design, and fit inside the Falcon fairing.
The company ordered 40 carbon dioxide scrubbers from SpaceX. These scrubbers will be identical to those used during Dragon free-flying missions like Inspiration 4 and Polaris Dawn. Crews can swap out the cartridges after lasting four to five days. For Haven-2, Vast plans to use single-use consumables before expanding to a closed-loop system.
“We should try to improve the life support system towards a closed loop that recycles everything, features better CO² scrubbing, and recycles the water as quickly as you can so that you can have it permanently crewed as quickly as you can,” Haot said.
Part of the contract with NASA stipulates that the station should have permanent astronaut presence from day one, something Vast believes is unrealistic. Instead, it aims to transition from part-time to full-time living gradually.
“It’s never occurred on any space station, including the ISS, and we believe that all that [the contract’s stipulation] will do is just delay having anything up there,” Haot noted.
Rendering of the complete Haven-2 space station. (Credit: Vast)
“You know, maybe two ninety-day missions or two sixty-day missions using consumables, which we will have proven with Haven-1, and then we’re adding module two, module three, module four every six months. Each extra module is bringing more consumables, but our goal is that each module is bringing better technology.”
Vast’s design for the station differs from those of the ISS, especially in its modular design. Whereas the ISS has specific modules for science, living, storage, and even power generation, Haven-2 is planning for each module to include redundant systems. This means each module could operate as a free-flying station of its own.
“If you have an anomaly on a module, we could get rid of it without compromising the whole space station,” Haot pointed out as a benefit to the design. “We can also be fully functional with the first module and so on. It’s also lower cost because we have one design.”
Haven-2 will begin with four modules, each 3.8 m in diameter, launched aboard a Falcon Heavy using a specialized stretched fairing. The core module, measuring seven meters in diameter, is scheduled to launch atop SpaceX’s Starship. The company wants to be able to launch more using Starship, but Vast says there are a few limiting factors, including the vehicle’s currently unknown final specifications.
“We don’t yet know the exact volume of the Starship fairing, and we don’t know the [deployment] mechanism yet,” Haot pointed out. “SpaceX is focused on what they should be focused on, which is making money to get to Mars and launching Starship and Starlink next year.”
The aim is to have Haven-2 in orbit two years before the end of the ISS’s operational lifetime, with the station fully built by 2032.
The Haven Demo satellite inside a clean room at Vast’s headquarters. (Credit: D Wise for NSF)
Vast will launch a 500 kg satellite demonstration mission on an upcoming SpaceX Bandwagon rideshare mission to test several key technologies featured on its upcoming stations. Specifically, the Haven Demo satellite will test major components of the Haven-1 station.
“It’s designed to test all of our propulsion, avionics, RF systems, all the subsystems [of Haven-1],” Haot said.
It will not include any pressure modules. Vast estimates the mission will cost approximately $10 million, which Haot notes is significantly less than the $1 billion already invested in Haven-1. Furthermore, if additional testing is needed, the company will have three slots on three future SpaceX rideshare missions.
Vast hopes these fast technological leaps, including demonstrating technologies on rideshare missions, will lead to significant leaps in American spaceflight and the commercial space station industry.
“The ISS [modules], many of them were built in the U.S. in the late 90s and early 2000s, so it’s been twenty years since a space station primary structure has been built in the U.S.,” Haot said. “The reason we are doing it is because we need to do it. [We’re doing it with] low costs and high speeds of iteration, [so] we’re really proud to bring that capability back to the United States.”
(Lead image: Artist’s impression of the Vast Haven-1 space station with a SpaceX Crew Dragon docked to it. Credit: Vast)
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