Vast, the “SpaceX of space stations” enters the race to become the successor to the ISS

Provide a successor to the International Space Station (ISS). This is the ambition of Vast, the small space company that is coming up in the United States. And in which some observers see a future «SpaceX des stations orbitales ». Born from the merger in 2023 between Vast and The Launcher, two start-ups from the Californian New Space ecosystem, the young company unveiled, this Monday, its project for a new generation space station, called Haven-2, in the part of the International Astronautical Congress (1AC), which is being held in Milan (October 14-18).

“The first Haven-2 module, equipped with two docking (mooring) ports for a cargo ship and a manned vessel and with a capacity for four astronauts, will be operational from 2028, in order to take over from the ISS and avoid a capacity hole in Earth orbit”explains Max Haot, CEO of Vast. The ISS must in fact cease its activities in 2030 and then be decommissioned at the beginning of 2031 by SpaceX, which was chosen last July by NASA to carry out this unprecedented high-risk operation. The agency awarded a contract worth some $850 million to Elon Musk’s space company (to the detriment of Northrop Grumman), to develop…