Who will replace the International Space Station (ISS)? In 2030, the United States plans to retire ISS, hiring Elon Musk to build a special spacecraft to push the space station to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere -- but America's orbital endeavors won't end there.
Already, four teams of companies are hard at work developing replacements for ISS. Two of them you've probably already heard of:
- Orbital Reef, a joint venture led by Blue Origin and backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, which includes partners Sierra Space, Redwire, Boeing, and Amazon.com.
- And Starlab, an even bigger and more international team, is led by Voyager Technologies (NYSE: VOYG) with help from partners Hilton Worldwide, Janus Henderson Group, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir in the U.S., and MDA Space, Airbus, and Mitsubishi internationally.
Two other, much smaller teams are also trying to build space stations.
These include Vast, a privately owned space company founded by cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, and Axiom Space, co-founded by former longtime ISS program manager Michael Suffredini. As solo efforts, these two companies are vastly outnumbered (and lack the cash) of the two presumed leaders.
Axiom Space is trying to change that.
Image source: Getty Images.
$350 million for Axiom
Last week, Axiom raised $350 million in new funding from a series of private investors, including venture capital firms Type One Ventures and 1789 Capital, hedge fund LuminArx Capital Management, Hungarian IT firm 4iG, and the Qatar Investment Authority. Axiom co-founder Kam Ghaffarian also invested.
CEO Jonathan Cirtain says the new funds will be used to complete construction of the first module of the proposed "Axiom Station," a Payload Power Thermal Module (PPTM), and to continue development work on the company's second module, a habitation module capable of supporting four crew members.
The first module is scheduled for launch in 2028, at which time it will attach to ISS. It will remain there until the second module launches in 2029, at which time the PPTM will detach from ISS and link up with the hab module to form a new, independent space station.
Prior to either module going up, Axiom plans to send a fifth team of astronauts to ISS to continue training to operate their new space station.
Who's winning the space station space race?
Assuming all goes as planned, Axiom's first module will arrive a year after Vast puts its own Haven-1 module in orbit in 2027. If Axiom's hab module arrives on schedule in 2029, however, Axiom's station may become habitable before Vast's, which doesn't expect its station to be complete before 2030.
Starlab hopes to launch its entire station all in one go -- also in 2029.
And Orbital Reef? Its plans seem to be in flux. At last report, though, the Blue Origin-led effort seemed to be targeting a launch date no earlier than 2030.
Long story short: This race is still entirely up in the air (so to speak). Anyone could win it, including Axiom.
Will Axiom IPO, though, so investors can participate in the effort? That remains uncertain. At last report, the company's private market valuation was moving in the wrong direction, shrinking from $2.6 billion in 2023 to $2 billion in 2025, according to TSG Invest.
I have to say: That doesn't bode well for Axiom's IPO prospects.
