The Future of Space Stations - Part II: Commercial Space
📖 Full Retelling
With the ISS set to retire in 2030, several plans are in place to replace it. These include existing space stations, proposals by rising national space agencies, and commercial space stations. In terms of the commercial space sector, the plans are diverse and numerous.
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The Future of Space Stations - Part II: Commercial Space By Matthew Williams - March 25, 2026 08:01 PM UTC | Space Exploration After more than thirty years of service, the International Space Station is set to retire in 2030. To fill the vacuum this will create in terms of space science, research, innovation, and biological studies, multiple space agencies are planning successor stations. As addressed in the first installment, this includes NASA's Lunar Gateway , China's expansion of its Tiangong space station , India's proposed Bharatiya Antariksh Station , and Roscosmos' plans to recycle the modules that make up the Russian Orbital Segment of the ISS. However, there are also many plans for commercial space stations. This mirrors the growth of the private space sector in recent decades and the innovations commercial space has achieved. Examples include Blue Origin's Orbital Reef , Axiom Station , the Vast Haven-1 , the Gateway Foundation's VERA station , and the Airbus LOOP and Starlab space stations. These concepts offer a glimpse of what the "commercialization" of Low Earth Orbit will look like. Orbital Reef In December 2021, NASA announced it had selected Blue Origin and Sierra Space to create a "mixed-use business park" in LEO for commercial space activities and space tourism. Several commercial partners and institutes have signed on to this project, including Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University . The contract was one of three Space Act Agreements issued for the first phase of NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations program. These SAAs were the first of two phases by which NASA hopes to maintain an interrupted U.S.presence in LEO after the retirement of the ISS. As of the Summer 2024, NASA reported that both Blue Origin and Sierra Space had passed several developmental milestones, including successful burst tests of Sierra Space's Large Integrated Flexible Enviro...
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