Private Space Station Companies Offer Dueling Press Releases

Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) began in 1998, and 28 years later, it's starting to show its age. With persistent air leaks on the Russian side, it's slated to be pushed to a fiery death by a SpaceX spacecraft in 2031.

The ISS might win a reprieve. A revised NASA authorization bill making its way through the U.S. Senate calls for keeping it around until 2032. Just in case ISS doesn't last that long, though, the bill also instructs NASA to sign contracts with two or more companies working to build a replacement.

Image source: Getty Images.

Four separate teams of companies are competing to win NASA funding to help them build a replacement space station. These include:

• Orbital Reef, a joint venture led by Blue Origin and backed by Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
• Starlab, a more-international rival venture led by Voyager Technologies, and with partners including Hilton Worldwide, Janus Henderson Group, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir in the U.S., as well as international partners MDA Space, Airbus, and Mitsubishi.
• Two solo ventures: Axiom Space and Vast, building the Axiom Station and Haven-1, respectively.

Last month, I wrote about progress by these last two companies -- Axiom's $350 million funding round and its deal to send private astronauts to train on the ISS for a fifth time, and Vast's plan to send its first team of private astronauts to the ISS. And now, there's more news to report.

Vast is spinning up

Let's start with Vast. Perhaps encouraged by reports of Axiom's $250 million fundraising, it announced on March 5 that it has just raised $500 million. The first $300 million came from stock sales, with another $200 million raised through debt.

Backers include some famous space names: Japan's Mitsui, Space Capital, and Nikon, as well as the Qatar Investment Authority. Company founder Jed McCaleb also added to his Vast investment.

The company said in its press release that it is "the only operational commercial space station company to have designed, built, and flown its own spacecraft, Haven Demo." That's only a small spacecraft, measuring about 1 square meter, but Vast is using it to test the viability of a much larger Haven 1 habitation module, which will be 45 times larger and include "microgravity research and manufacturing facilities." The company plans a 2027 launch.

The station that Vast plans to use to replace ISS will be called Haven 2, and the company aims to have that one operational by 2028. Further out, Vast wants to build a space station featuring artificial gravity -- presumably by spinning it up -- around 2035.

And that's why Vast needed another $500 million on top of the $1 billion it has already spent. The company hasn't said anything specific yet about its plans to go public, but its press release did seem to hint that an initial public offering (IPO) may happen, noting it has been "funded privately to date" (emphasis added).

Starlab one-ups Vast

If Vast's approach is to colonize space in small steps, then Starlab prefers to make one giant leap into orbit. The same day Vast announced its fundraising, Starlab said that its own space station will be vastly larger from the get-go.

Starlab is designed to enable advanced biomedical breakthroughs.

Its 8-meter diameter habitat, and approximately 400 cubic meters of pressurized volume, allows Starlab to support 100% of the International Space Station's research payload capacity.

The internal payload lab... pic.twitter.com/6vnNVlrlIV

-- Starlab (@Starlab_Space) March 5, 2026

With a habitat eight meters in diameter -- lifted entirely into orbit in one go, atop a SpaceX Starship -- Starlab will instantly introduce 400 cubic meters of pressurized volume into space. That's nearly 10 times the size of Vast's planned Haven 1. It's enough room, says Starlab, to support 100% of the work that's currently being done aboard the ISS, which took nearly three decades to fully assemble.

Once operational, Starlab says, its station will be able to conduct "everything from 3D cell growth and accelerated disease modeling to precision manufacturing of biomedical implants and devices," and promote research into "treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other complex conditions."

Right this moment, all of these are pie-in-the-sky predictions. Starlab hasn't been built yet, much less launched. The SpaceX Starship that Starlab wants to use to put its station into orbit is still undergoing test flights. There's no guarantee the Voyager-led Starlab team will arrive in space by its planned 2029 launch date.

The upshot for investors

That said, there's no guarantee Vast will get Haven 1 into orbit next year, either, nor Haven 2 in 2028. To my mind, therefore, the race to replace the ISS remains wide open. Starlab still has the most publicly traded companies on its team, however.

Unless and until Vast confirms it will have an IPO, I still think Starlab is the best way for investors to own a piece of the next ISS.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Leidos, MDA Space, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.