Commercial Space Stations: The Race to Replace the ISS

For twenty-five years, humanity has kept exactly one address in orbit. Every private citizen who has floated above the Earth, from Dennis Tito in 2001 to the Axiom crews flying today, went to the same place: the International Space Station, a government outpost that rents out a handful of visitor seats a year. That is about to change. For the first time since the ISS was bolted together in the early 2000s, the number of places you can go in orbit is set to grow — and this time they will be owned by companies, not space agencies.

The rockets are the easy part. The real bottleneck in orbital tourism has always been destinations, and for the first time in a generation, more of them are on the way.

This is the reference I wish existed when I started tracking the field: every serious commercial-station project in one table, with the honest status of each, updated as the picture moves. It is not a hype list. Two of these four have real hardware; two are still mostly renderings and funding rounds, and I have tried to say clearly which is which.

The commercial space stations, compared

Sorted roughly by how close each is to flying. “Free-flying” means the station orbits on its own; the alternative is starting out attached to the ISS and detaching later.

Dates are company targets, not confirmed bookings, and human-spaceflight schedules slip as a rule. No operator except Axiom publishes a per-seat price; treat any figure you see for the others as speculation.

Vast Haven-1 and Haven-2: the fast mover

Vast is a Long Beach, California company founded in 2021, and it has done something the others haven’t yet: built the actual station. Haven-1 is deliberately small — a single module that launches to orbit fully assembled on one SpaceX Falcon 9, with a crew of four visiting for up to two weeks at a time. The company closed a $500 million funding round in March 2026 and has completed the primary structure and qualification testing, which is why it sits at the top of the table.

The launch target has slipped from an original 2026 goal to Q1 2027 or later, and the first crewed flight, Vast-1, follows the station up on a Crew Dragon. NASA has selected Vast for a later private astronaut mission, and France and the UK have each signed for seats. Vast’s larger follow-on, Haven-2, is a multi-module station aimed at NASA’s long-term commercial program. We keep a dedicated deep-dive on the first one: everything on Vast Haven-1.

Axiom Station: the incumbent’s play

Axiom Space is the only company on this list already flying people. It has run four private missions to the ISS (Ax-1 through Ax-4, the most recent in June 2025), which is why it carries more operational credibility than anyone else building a station. Its plan is a bridge rather than a leap: build commercial modules that attach to the ISS first, prove them in a working environment, then detach to fly as an independent Axiom Station before the ISS is gone.

Axiom raised $350 million in early 2026 and holds a NASA agreement to add a module to the station, with the first element targeted for around 2027 and free flight later in the decade. A stay on a finished Axiom Station has no published price — it doesn’t exist yet — but the company’s current ISS missions are the benchmark for what orbital access costs, which we break down in our Axiom Space cost guide.

Starlab: one launch, one station

Starlab is a joint venture led by Voyager Technologies and Airbus, with Northrop Grumman and the European Space Agency signed on. Its signature idea is simplicity: rather than assembling a station from many launches the way the ISS was built, Starlab is designed to reach orbit in a single flight of SpaceX’s Starship, which can carry a far wider payload than any rocket flying today. The team moved into full-scale development and kicked off its critical design review at the end of 2025, targeting a launch around 2028. It is further from flying than Haven-1 or Axiom’s first module, but it has locked in serious funding and a marquee partner list.

Orbital Reef: the ambitious one that slowed down

Announced by Blue Origin and Sierra Space in 2021 as a “mixed-use business park in space,” Orbital Reef is the largest concept here — a multi-module station sized for a rotating crew of up to ten, with Sierra Space’s inflatable LIFE habitat as a centerpiece. The team passed a NASA system-definition review in 2025, so the engineering is real. But Blue Origin has poured resources into its lunar-lander work for NASA’s Artemis program, and Orbital Reef’s public schedule has drifted to a vague “late 2020s.” It is the project with the grandest vision and the least certain timeline.

The 2026 course change you need to understand

Here is the part that reshuffles everything above. For years, NASA’s plan was to step back entirely — certify a few private stations, then buy visits the way it already buys cargo and crew rides, with no government outpost of its own. In March 2026, NASA changed course. Under a new framework it calls Ignition — responding to a December 2025 executive order directing the agency to have a replacement for the ISS by 2030 — NASA now intends to build a government-owned core module, attach it to the ISS to prove out commercial modules in a live environment, and keep it flying after the ISS is deorbited as the anchor of a hybrid station that private companies plug into.

In plain terms: NASA decided the pure hands-off approach was moving too slowly to beat the 2030 clock, and that the business case for fully private stations wasn’t closing fast enough. The agency still expects to make Phase 2 awards to at least two commercial providers, so the companies above are not out of the picture — but the destination they attach to may increasingly be a NASA-owned hub rather than a station of their own. It is a live, moving story, and the honest read in mid-2026 is that the finish line is clearer than the route to it.

So when can you actually book a stay?

Not for years, and not cheaply. The straight answer, tier by tier:

• Right now: the only orbital stay you can buy is an Axiom mission to the ISS, at roughly $55 million a seat for ten to fourteen days — months of training included, sleeping quarters the size of a phone booth.
• 2027–2028: Haven-1 and Axiom’s first free-flying elements come online, but early seats are sold by direct inquiry to governments and researchers, not off a booking page, and are unlikely to undercut today’s prices.
• 2030s: the point at which a stay in orbit might start to resemble a hotel rather than a research posting — contingent on SpaceX’s Starship and its rivals dragging launch costs down far enough to matter.

For the human side of that experience — what a stay actually feels like, and what it costs today — see our space hotels guide. For where every operator’s pricing and status stands right now, the space tourism price index tracks it live.

While you wait: watch the stations overhead tonight

An orbital seat is years and an eight-figure fare away for almost everyone. But the neighborhood these stations will join is free to watch, and you don’t need a ticket. The ISS — flying the same low orbit Haven-1 and the rest will use — is one of the brightest points in the night sky and sails over most places every few weeks. A free astronomy app will alert you before it rises; and if you want to turn a moving dot into Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons the same night, our beginner telescope guide is where to start. It is the closest thing to space you can have tonight, for about the price of a nice dinner.

Sources and how we track this

Status, dates, and funding figures are compiled from each company’s own disclosures (Vast, Axiom Space, Sierra Space, Blue Origin, Voyager and Airbus), NASA’s public statements on its Ignition framework and Commercial LEO Destinations program, and reporting from Space.com. Every date here is a company or agency target, not a confirmed schedule; we update this page as programs move. For our full sourcing standard — primary sources first, two sources to move a status, every figure dated — see how we source pricing.