The International Space Station is set to be deorbited around 2030. NASA is paying a handful of private companies to build what comes next. Axiom Space, Vast, a Blue Origin and Sierra Space partnership building Orbital Reef, and a Voyager Space and Airbus partnership building Starlab are the leading contenders. Each is pursuing a different design and timeline under NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program.
None has yet reached orbit. Axiom plans to attach its first module to the ISS itself before detaching into an independent station. Vast is racing toward a standalone single-module outpost called Haven-1. How fast any of them actually fly will decide whether the United States keeps a continuous crewed presence in low Earth orbit once the ISS comes down.
Why the ISS Is Being Retired
The International Space Station’s oldest modules, including Zarya and Unity, have flown since 1998. That makes the station more than three decades old by the time it is due to come down. Age shows up in specific, documented ways, not as a vague concern. NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, have spent recent years investigating recurring small air leaks and cracking in the Russian Zvezda service module’s transfer tunnel. Those problems get harder and more expensive to manage the longer the structure stays in orbit.
Rather than keep extending a station built for a shorter design life, NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the ISS around 2030, guiding it down over a remote part of the ocean using a dedicated SpaceX-built deorbit vehicle. Some members of the US Congress have pushed back on that timeline, arguing NASA should not retire the ISS before a replacement is actually flying, which is exactly the schedule risk the rest of this page covers.
NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations Program
NASA calls its replacement strategy Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD), and the model deliberately mirrors what already worked for cargo and crew: NASA funds development, then buys access to a service it does not own or operate itself, the same relationship NASA has with SpaceX and Sierra Space for hauling cargo to orbit today. Under CLD, several companies compete to build stations NASA can then buy crew time and research space on, rather than NASA designing and owning a single successor outright.
In March 2026, NASA reshaped that plan under a new framework it calls Ignition. Instead of requiring each company to build and fly a fully independent station from day one, Ignition may have companies supply individual modules to a shared, government-anchored hub in a first phase, lowering the bar to an operating outpost while the more ambitious independent-station designs continue development behind it. The change reflects how far behind schedule most of the original CLD station concepts had already fallen.
Axiom Station: Already Flying People, Building the Station Around Them
Axiom Space is the only company on this list already operating in space today, through private astronaut missions that fly paying crews to the ISS. Its station strategy leans on that head start. Rather than launch a stand-alone outpost from scratch, Axiom plans to attach its first module, a power and thermal module, directly to the ISS while the station is still operating, then follow with a habitat module. Once both are in place, the combined structure is meant to undock from the ISS and continue flying as its own independent station.
That gives Axiom a working relationship with NASA and existing ISS infrastructure that a from-scratch competitor does not have. It also ties Axiom’s early schedule to the ISS’s own remaining operational life. NASA’s own oversight office has flagged open technical items as risks worth watching, including the astronaut spacesuit Axiom is separately developing for the Artemis program.
Vast’s Haven-1: Racing to Be First as a Free-Flyer
Vast is pursuing the opposite path. Its small, single-module station, Haven-1, is designed to be the first fully independent commercial station in orbit, rather than starting attached to the ISS. The plan calls for a Falcon 9 launch, followed by short-duration crewed visits under a mission Vast calls Vast-1, before the company moves on to a larger, multi-module successor it calls Haven-2.
Vast’s own public schedule has shifted across the sources tracking it. Target dates range from an ambitious near-term launch to sometime in 2027. That kind of slip is normal for a first-of-its-kind commercial spacecraft, not unique to Vast. The company’s bet is that a smaller, simpler station reaches orbit faster than a more ambitious design competing for the same NASA funding.
Orbital Reef and Starlab: The Bigger, Slower-Moving Concepts
Blue Origin and Sierra Space, with Boeing also participating, are jointly developing Orbital Reef. The partners describe it as a mixed-use “business park” in low Earth orbit, serving research, manufacturing, and tourism customers rather than any single anchor tenant. It is the most ambitious design of the group in stated scope, and correspondingly the furthest from a confirmed launch date of the stations covered here.
Voyager Space and Airbus are separately developing Starlab. The station has moved into what the partners call full-scale development, with a target launch described as around 2028. Both Orbital Reef and Starlab are larger, more capable designs than Vast’s Haven-1. Both face the same basic tradeoff: more capability generally means a longer road to a first launch.
Comparing the Four Programs
| Program | Companies | Approach | Status as of 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Axiom Station | Axiom Space | Module attaches to ISS, then detaches to fly free | Already flying private astronauts to the ISS; own modules in development |
| Haven-1 / Haven-2 | Vast | Small standalone module first, larger station later | Haven-1 targeting a near-term Falcon 9 launch |
| Orbital Reef | Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing | Large multi-purpose “business park” station | Early development, no confirmed launch date |
| Starlab | Voyager Space, Airbus | Single-module station for research and manufacturing | Moved into full-scale development, targeting around 2028 |
Every program on this list currently targets a date later than its original announcement, which is the pattern that makes the ISS deorbit timeline politically contested. A station under development is not a station in orbit, and none of these four has flown a crewed mission yet.
How This Compares to China’s Tiangong
China has already solved the problem the United States is still working through. Its own station, Tiangong, has flown crews continuously since 2022 and gives China a permanently crewed outpost under its sole control, with no dependence on a commercial contractor’s schedule. The American approach trades that certainty for competition: several companies pursuing different designs, in the hope that at least one reaches orbit on a workable timeline, rather than one government-run program that either succeeds or leaves no backup plan.
What Would Change the Outlook
A confirmed crewed launch by any of the four programs would be the clearest signal that the commercial-station strategy is working on schedule, and none has happened yet. On the other side, a formal NASA decision to extend ISS operations past 2030, something Congress has already pushed for, would ease the near-term pressure but would not by itself fix the underlying schedule risk facing every commercial contender.
The closest public sources for tracking real progress are each company’s own program pages, along with NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations updates, which periodically report each contractor’s actual milestones rather than its original announced schedule.