Vast wins ISS private astronaut mission

SAN FRANCISCO — NASA has selected commercial space station company Vast to fly a private astronaut mission to the International Space Station in 2027.

NASA announced Feb. 12 that it awarded a private astronaut mission (PAM) opportunity to Vast. That mission will go to the station no earlier than mid-2027, spending two weeks there.

This is the sixth PAM that NASA has awarded. It is the first, though, to a company other than Axiom Space, which won the first five PAM opportunities. That company has flown four of those missions to the station, most recently Ax-4 in mid-2025. It won a fifth mission Jan. 30 for launch no earlier than January 2027.

“Vast is honored to have been selected by NASA for the sixth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station,” Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, in a statement. “Leveraging the remaining life of the International Space Station with science and research-led commercial crewed missions is a critical part of the transition to commercial space stations and fully unlocking the orbital economy.”

Vast signaled its intent to compete for a PAM opportunity two years ago. The company said flying a mission to the ISS would help it build experience for its future commercial space stations.

“From our point of view, it will make us a better space station builder, a better partner of NASA, and it will help us practice a lot of the disciplines we are building” for its future commercial stations, Haot said at a February 2024 conference.

NASA released a call for proposals in April 2025 for both the fifth and sixth PAMs. When it awarded Axiom the fifth PAM, the agency said it was finalizing the order for the other mission.

Vast will use a SpaceX Crew Dragon for its ISS mission under an earlier agreement between the companies. Vast is also partnered with SpaceX on Haven-1, the single-module commercial space station the company is developing for launch in the first quarter of 2027.

Neither Axiom nor Vast have disclosed the crews for their missions. Those crews will require approval by NASA and the other ISS partners.

“We have a pretty significant amount of demand for these astronaut seats,” Jonathan Cirtain, president and chief executive of Axiom Space, said in a Feb. 12 briefing about the company’s new $350 million funding round. That results in what he called an “oversubscription” of the seats available on the flight.

He added that Axiom has yet to select which of its astronauts will command the mission. Michael López-Alegría and Peggy Whitson, both former NASA astronauts, have each commanded two previous Axiom Space missions, and the company has also hired former JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Cirtain described a competition among the three astronauts to be selected to command the Ax-5 mission, “which is an awesome and unique experience I get to have as CEO of this company.”