NASA Funds Development of Commercial Space Stations
NASA has added milestones and funding to agreements with two companies working on commercial space station concepts using money from a third agreement that ended last year. The space agency announced on Jan. 5 that it added a combined $99.5 million in funding to existing Space Act Agreements with Blue Origin and Voyager Space as part of its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program.
Blue Origin, which is developing the Orbital Reef space station, received an increase of $42 million to its original $130 million award. The increase includes additional milestones for subsystem design reviews and technology maturation, as well as work on the station’s life support systems. Voyager Space, which is partnered with Airbus Defence and Space to develop the Starlab station, received $57.5 million in additional funding on its $160 million award.
The funding primarily comes from a third CLD agreement that NASA awarded to Northrop Grumman, which announced in October that it would no longer pursue its own space station but instead would work with Voyager Space on Starlab. As part of that partnership, Northrop withdrew from its NASA CLD agreement, allowing the agency to reallocate the $89 million that had not been spent by Northrop on its $125.6 million award to other CLD providers.
These agreements are part of NASA’s strategy to support the development of commercial stations the agency wants to have in operation by late this decade to support a transition from the International Space Station (ISS), set for retirement in 2030. NASA would then be a customer of those commercial stations along with other space agencies and companies. The agency is also in discussions with Axiom Space to access a docking port on the ISS for commercial modules that will form the basis of a future standalone commercial space station.
However, concerns remain about the ability of companies to develop commercial space stations by the end of the decade, with the possibility of a short-term gap between the ISS and commercial stations if those commercial stations are not ready by the end of the decade and the ISS is not extended. The agency may not have a better grasp of those companies’ abilities to meet their schedules until after NASA issues what it calls Phase 2 contracts in 2026 to certify the stations for use by NASA astronauts and to purchase services.