Vast Takes a Giant Leap Towards Building a Private Space Station

In the race to build a new space station to replace the aging International Space Station (ISS), two teams stand out:

Orbital Reef, one of the first projects to throw its hat in the ring, is a joint venture led by Blue Origin and backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos but also including partners Sierra Space, Redwire (NYSE: RDW), Boeing, and Amazon.com.

Its archrival Starlab boasts the biggest, best-funded, and most international team, including companies ranging from Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG), which is leading the project, to Hilton Worldwide, Janus Henderson Group, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir in the U.S., as well as international partners MDA Space, Airbus, and Mitsubishi.

Image source: Getty Images.

With the biggest teams and the greatest financial firepower, it's likely one of these two teams will build the first privately owned space station -- but don't count out the dark horses. Two other "teams" are in the running, albeit each is running solo, and each has advantages of its own. Privately held Axiom Space, for example, has already sent its own astronauts to train on ISS on four separate occasions, developing the skills they'll need to operate their own space station once Axiom builds it. A fifth such mission is scheduled to take place next year.

And now the final ISS contender, Vast, is about to send a team to ISS -- for its first time ever.

ISS or bust

Sometime in summer 2027, says NASA, a Vast team of up to four astronauts will depart on a SpaceX rocket to spend "up to 14 days aboard the space station." Company CEO Max Haot says such training missions form a "critical part of the transition to commercial space stations and fully unlocking the orbital economy."

In a statement, Vast said this mission will "strengthen Vast's position as a candidate to deliver its proposed successor to the space station, the multi-module, continuously crewed Haven-2."

Yet neither of the leaders has performed a similar mission. Axiom has, and soon Vast will, too.

Vast has a second advantage over its rivals; last year it launched its experimental Haven Demo satellite, making it "the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft." (Emphasis added because, while individual partners on the Orbital Reef and Starlab teams (Boeing and Airbus, for example) have flown their own spacecraft, the commercial space station teams they're on have technically not done so.)

Yet.

To fully cement its lead, Vast will need to deliver on not just its ISS astronaut mission but on its much bigger promise to launch the Haven-1 space station in 2027 and to launch enough subsequent modules to make Haven-1 permanently habitable by 2030.

Granted, ISS is expected to cease operations in 2030 then go kerplunk in the Pacific Ocean in 2031. That's the same target date that pretty much everyone vying to replace ISS needs to target as well.

The upshot for investors

The race to replace ISS remains wide open. If you want to own a piece of the winner, the only publicly traded stocks available today remain those on the Orbital Reef and Starlab teams.

Invest accordingly.

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