The companies racing to replace the ISS before it deorbits in 2030

The International Space Station has been continuously inhabited since November 2000. By 2030, NASA plans to deorbit it into the South Pacific Ocean — and four commercial companies are building what comes next.

The ISS deorbit timeline

NASA awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract in 2024 to build the US Deorbit Vehicle — a dedicated spacecraft that will attach to the ISS and conduct controlled reentry into the South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area, the same ocean stretch that received Russia's Mir station in 2001. Deorbit is scheduled for January 2031, with the ISS transitioning to reduced commercial operations in 2028 as crew begins shifting to the new commercial platforms.

The transition creates a hard deadline. Commercial stations need to be operational before 2031, or there will be a gap in US human spaceflight presence in low Earth orbit — a gap that China's Tiangong station, now fully operational with a three-person rotating crew, would fill by default.

Axiom Space: the modular approach

Axiom is the furthest along of the four. Rather than building a free-flying station from scratch, Axiom plans to attach modules to the ISS starting in 2026, use it as a bootstrap platform, then detach as a free-flying station after ISS deorbits. NASA has approved the first Axiom module (AxH1) to dock at Node 2's forward port.

Axiom has already launched three private astronaut missions to the ISS, has manufacturing facilities in Houston, and has raised $350 million in Series C funding. Its business model spans three segments: private astronaut missions at roughly $55 million per seat, research contracts with biotech companies for microgravity pharmaceutical work, and government customers — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and South Korea have all sent astronauts via Axiom missions.

The modular approach is lower-risk than a clean-sheet station but depends on ISS compatibility and NASA's willingness to continue accommodating Axiom docking through the late 2020s.

Vast and Haven-1

Vast, backed by Jed McCaleb (co-founder of Ripple and Stellar), is taking a faster and smaller approach. Haven-1 is a single-module station — 10 meters pressurized — targeting launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9, with Haven-2, a larger multi-module design, to follow. Vast has contracted SpaceX for crewed Dragon missions.

The company's thesis is that the commercial market wants speed and flexibility over ISS-scale ambition. Haven-1 is designed primarily for research and a growing private astronaut market, not as a replacement for the ISS's full scientific capability. If it launches as planned, it would be the first commercial free-flying crewed station in history.

Starlab: Nanoracks and Airbus

Starlab is a joint venture between Nanoracks (acquired by Voyager Space) and Airbus. The design is the most ambitious single-launch concept: a 340-cubic-meter station — roughly comparable to the ISS US segment — designed to launch as a single payload on a Starship, with a target date of 2028.

Airbus brings real space station heritage. It built the Columbus research lab and the Automated Transfer Vehicle that supplied the ISS for years. Nanoracks has operated commercially inside the ISS since 2009 — deploying small satellites, managing research payloads — and has more commercial in-orbit operations experience than any other private company.

A successful Starlab launch would give the US a large-volume commercial station operational before ISS deorbit. The Starship dependency is the critical path risk: Starship is still in test flight phases, and the logistics of mating a 340-cubic-meter pressurized module to a Starship upper stage for launch remain complex.

Blue Origin's Orbital Reef

Orbital Reef is Blue Origin's commercial station concept, built in partnership with Sierra Space, Boeing, and Redwire. Blue Origin received a $130 million NASA Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination award in 2021.

The partnership structure is notable: Sierra Space contributes the LIFE inflatable habitat (27 cubic meters expandable), Boeing brings station systems engineering, and Redwire specializes in in-space manufacturing. The "mixed-use business park" design concept includes multiple docking ports for simultaneous commercial users.

Timelines have slipped from original 2025–2027 targets to 2028–2029. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket — a prerequisite — flew successfully for the first time in January 2025, removing one critical path dependency. The challenge now is execution speed: Blue Origin has historically moved slower than SpaceX on comparable development programs.

What research actually needs a space station

The commercial pitch for all four stations comes down to a narrow set of research applications where microgravity is genuinely necessary, not just novel. Pharmaceutical crystallization: certain proteins grow in larger, purer crystals in microgravity, improving drug formulation research. ZBLAN optical fiber manufacturing: this fluoride glass fiber has lower attenuation than silica, but its crystal structure forms more uniformly without gravity-induced sedimentation. Materials science on metallic glass and high-temperature alloys. And human physiology studies for long-duration deep space missions — the data needed to send humans to Mars safely requires long-duration microgravity exposure that can't be replicated on Earth.

The economic question is whether these applications plus space tourism can sustain multiple stations simultaneously. The ISS costs NASA approximately $3 billion per year to operate. Commercial stations might run leaner — estimates range from $800 million to $1.5 billion annually — but the current commercial LEO research market is estimated at $300–400 million per year. Tourism, manufacturing, and government contracts need to close the gap.

The geopolitical dimension

China's Tiangong station is operational and expanding. US law bars NASA from cooperating with China's space agency, so Tiangong is not an option for American researchers. Russia's continued ISS participation has been increasingly fraught since 2022; Roscosmos has stated intentions to build its own ROSS national station, though funding gaps make the timeline aspirational.

The commercial station race is partly a hedge against a scenario where the ISS deorbits, American commercial successors are delayed, and Tiangong becomes the only operational crewed platform in low Earth orbit — with access controlled by a government that bars US participation.

What the transition looks like

By 2031, the orbital picture could include a deorbited ISS, one or two operational commercial stations at different size and price tiers, an expanded Chinese Tiangong with additional modules, and possibly a nascent lunar Gateway in cislunar space supporting Artemis missions. Not all four commercial competitors will survive to operational status — the market is unlikely to sustain all of them simultaneously, and capital discipline will eventually concentrate on the two or three designs that demonstrate actual launch readiness.

The transition is the highest-stakes infrastructure handoff in the history of human spaceflight: a single 420-metric-ton platform built over 30 years by 15 nations, handed off to private companies operating on startup timelines and investor expectations. The companies that succeed will define where humans live and work in space for the next 30 years.