Space Company Plans to Open First Commercial Space Station

On Wednesday, a company that works with space technology in California shared its plans to launch a new first commercial space station.

The project, called Haven-1, will be launched sometime after August 2025, and it’s being developed by Vast, a Long Beach company, in collaboration with SpaceX, which is owned by Elon Musk.

Initially, Haven-1 will operate as an independent space station with crew members. It will be launched using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Later, Vast will connect Haven-1 with a bigger space station created by the same company.

Vast plans to launch two space missions

Vast-1 is another mission that Vast is planning, and it will be the first time that humans will fly to Haven-1 using a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. This mission, Vast-1, will include a crew of four people, and participants will have the opportunity to orbit the Earth for 30 days.

Vast’s President, Max Haot, shared with USA TODAY that the company expects Vast-1 to begin either three months after the Haven-1 launch or at the end of 2025.

LIVE IN SPACE for up to 30 days aboard the world's first private space station, Haven-1.

Targeted to launch no earlier than August 2025 in a @SpaceX Dragon vehicle.

🧵 pic.twitter.com/ShrYg3vftO

— VΛST (@vast) May 10, 2023

Both Haven-1 and Vast-1 will launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. No people will be onboard when Haven-1 launches, as the company wants to make sure everything is safe and under control before starting a crewed mission.

Main goal behind the launch of Haven-1

Vast has big plans for Haven-1, which are part of a bigger picture that includes exploring gravitational environments on Earth, the moon, and Mars until at least the 2040s.

One of the ways the company hopes to use Haven-1 is by conducting the world’s first artificial gravity experiment on a commercial space station.

Jed McCaleb, Vast’s co-founder, explained that the lack of gravity in space makes it challenging for people to stay there for more than a year without experiencing bone loss, retina issues, and brain damage.

To solve this issue, Vast plans to create a spinning structure that will generate a centrifugal force that pushes everything toward the end of the station. McCaleb stated that by using a spinning structure, Vast hopes to simulate the downward force of gravity.

The spinning artificial gravity space station will launch using SpaceX’s Starship transportation system.

Max Haot, Vast’s President, said that working with SpaceX was an easy decision. Haot explained that while there are other options, such as Boeing Starliner and Russia’s space technology, “right now is not the right time to be doing partnership in these regions. If you want to build a space station … SpaceX Dragon is the only option today.”