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Vast Space now aims for 2026 launch of Haven-1 space station after key milestone (photos)

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A white cylindrical vessel with conical top is mounted to stand on a test area, surrounded by railed scaffolding.

Vast Space is taking big steps toward putting the first commercial space station in orbit.

The California-based startup recently completed a major testing milestone for the qualification vessel of its upcoming Haven-1 station, a benchmark Vast also used to reevaluate the launch date for the company's first flight-ready module.

"With the completion of our primary structure qualification test and a fully assembled team, we now have greater clarity on our build and launch schedule. As a result, we are updating our timeline," Vast said in a statement.

Haven-1 will ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit — a mission that was initially slated for this August. Now, Vast expects Haven-1 to launch no earlier than May 2026.

Even with the delay, it's still an "ambitious timeline," the company said. But Vast remains optimistic: "If all goes as planned, we will have designed, built, and launched the world’s first commercial space station in three years — a pace never before achieved in human spaceflight."

Vast began manufacturing the Haven-1 qualification article at its Long Beach headquarters in July 2024 and transported the module to the company's test stand in Mojave, California, last month. There, the module began a series of campaigns to qualify the module's structural integrity. Those campaigns are ongoing, but one passed recently was a significant hurdle for the module's continued development.

Using dry nitrogen, Vast pressurized the module on the test stand twice — the first for a duration of five hours, and the second for 48 hours. According to the company's data, Haven-1's pressure sensors showed an "indiscernible" leak rate, exceeding the vessel's requirements and falling within compliance for NASA's crew-rated spacecraft qualifications.

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A man in a grey long-sleeve shirt and ginger hair faces away, looking up with his left hand holding the hatch at the end of a large white conical vessel with a gridded latus around its exterior.

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A man stands above a domed pane of glass with a wire in secured with yellow tape at its center in the shape of a spiral. The dome is secured by metal sheets of a space module.

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The conical bottom of a white space module is suspended in the desert against a bright blue sky, next to tall stacks of scaffolding.

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A large group of people kneel and stand in three-ish rows, in front of a large white space station module, laid on its side in a large factory.

That last bit is important. Vast is hoping to win the bid for NASA's Commercial LEO Destination (CLD) contract in 2026, and wants to put itself ahead of the competition.

With the International Space Station (ISS) approaching retirement at the end of 2030, NASA has been eager for companies to get commercial space stations up and running. Indeed, nearly half a dozen other private contenders have voiced plans to construct their own LEO destinations — namely, Northrop Grumman, Axiom Space, Nanoracks and Sierra Space.

As those companies tread water while they gauge market demand or continue their station developments in the background, Vast says it's on track to get Haven-1 to orbit in record time, and has begun actively seeking out customers and scientists with research they want to fly to space.

In the weeks ahead, the test module will be submitted to simulated launch pressures using hydraulic actuators on the Mojave test stand, as well as undergo structural load tests while under pressure.

Even as the qualification article began its test campaign at the end of last month, Vast was already manufacturing the Haven-1 flight vehicle — the one going to space. Matching the six-month pace the qualification module took from manufacturing to its tests in Mojave, Vast aims to complete the primary structure for the flight module by July of this year. The company's full timeline, from now through the first crewed mission to Haven-1 is as follows: