Why it matters
Vast is the private Long Beach company trying to fly a commercial space station while NASA shops for a successor to the International Space Station. Its near-term vehicle is Haven-1, a single module listed for four people: 4.4 meters in diameter, 10.1 meters tall, 45 cubic meters habitable and 80 cubic meters pressurized, 14,600 kilograms, and 13,200 watts, aimed at a 425 kilometer orbit inclined 51.6 degrees. The Haven-1 page says SpaceX will launch that module on a Falcon 9 and bring crews up on Dragon for trips of about two weeks.
The larger public stake is NASA's Commercial LEO Destination Contract. On 9 October 2026 the agency released the final request for proposals for companies to design, build, test, certify, and operate commercial low-Earth-orbit destinations, including end-to-end destination and transportation services. Proposals are due 8 December 2026, and NASA says awards are expected in spring 2027. Vast is private, so this case still rests on hardware progress and that competition rather than on audited revenue.
Capital and the path to hardware
Vast's 5 March 2026 funding release says the company was founded in 2021 and has been privately financed. It announced $500 million of new capital: a $300 million Series A led by Balerion Space Ventures and $200 million of debt. Named participants are IQT, the Qatar Investment Authority, Mitsui, MUFG, Nikon, Stellar Ventures, Space Capital, Earthrise Ventures, and founder Jed McCaleb. Former NASA chief technologist A.C. Charania, a Balerion advisor, was to join the board with the transaction. The release says more than $1 billion has been invested in station technology and facilities, and the company boilerplate says Long Beach employment is above 1,000. Those figures are company-reported. This pass did not find a public filing that audits them.
In the same release McCaleb describes a long-term vision of billions of people living in space, with Haven stations as the near-term steps. Vast also claims a tenfold cut in primary-structure manufacturing cost versus traditional station programs. That cost claim is the company's, not an independent audit. The release says the round is meant to expand facilities, grow the team, launch Haven-1 in 2027, fly a NASA private-astronaut mission the company had just won, and pursue the Phase 2 commercial-destination bid.
What has already flown
Haven Demo is the on-orbit evidence. It launched on 2 November 2025 at 1:09 a.m. Eastern on SpaceX's Bandwagon-4 rideshare, deployed its solar arrays, and stayed power-positive through the flight. Vast's 19 March 2026 closeout says the spacecraft completed 49 test objectives, including guidance and navigation, avionics, power, solar arrays, radio communications, cameras, thermal control, propulsion, and flight software, with Impulse Space Saiph thruster burns in January 2026. Mission control in Long Beach confirmed a controlled deorbit on 4 February 2026. The terminal burn started at 7:40 p.m. Pacific, 5 February 2026 at 03:40 UTC, toward a South Pacific splashdown coordinated with NASA and with aviation and maritime authorities.
That closeout is also the source of the tightest public schedule line. It said Haven-1 would be flight-ready in the first quarter of 2027, after the flight primary structure had passed full-scale pressure and static-load testing and had entered phase-one clean-room integration. The same update said Haven-2 modules would start launching in 2028, about every six months, toward a four-module station that could support a continuous crew by the end of 2030. Those dates are company targets from March 2026, not a NASA award.
Haven-1 as of October 2026
The Haven-1 page, read on 19 October 2026, still says the station is launching in 2027. It does not repeat the March wording of a first-quarter flight-ready date. Its current captions say that in October Vast completed a fit check of the fully tested passive docking hardware, that the twelve flight solar-array wings are in acceptance inspection at headquarters, and that the Vast Control Unit, the flight computer, is entering a semi-anechoic chamber for electromagnetic-interference testing. Other captions show life-support testing, interior shelves, and wet-trash hardware still being fitted. The page does not announce a shipment of the flight vehicle to NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility.
The same page is the product description Vast is selling ahead of flight: government and private astronaut missions of about two weeks, a 1.1 meter domed window, personal crew quarters, and a Haven-1 Lab for research and in-space manufacturing. It says Starlink laser terminals on Haven-1 would be the first Starlink service on a commercial station. Crew transport is still Dragon. Nothing on the page shows a crewed flight completed.
The NASA competition
NASA's 9 October release does not award a station contract. It says the agency will use firm-fixed-price, multi-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts, select two or more contractors through early development, and then compete a task order for final design, test and evaluation, certification, and services, which can go to one or more contractors. Administrator Jared Isaacman tied the purchase to a continued American presence in low Earth orbit after the International Space Station retires. He said the economics have to work, and that NASA wants credible technical plans from companies willing to invest and to find customers besides NASA.
Vast's March funding release treats winning the Phase 2 bid as one use of the new capital. The March Haven Demo closeout is the attached source for a 2028 start and a four-module continuous-crew target at the end of 2030. A later Haven-2 configuration page was read for this audit and is not a citation in this overview. Until NASA selects contractors, that sequence is a company plan.
Europe is a study, not a booking
On 5 October 2026, during the International Astronautical Congress, ESA signed a new memorandum with Vast, press release N 61-2026. It replaces the June 2024 agreement signed at ILA Berlin, runs for an initial three years, and starts with a joint feasibility study meant to produce a roadmap and an indicative schedule for any later binding agreements. Director General Josef Aschbacher described it as one option Europe is assessing so astronauts, research, and technology can continue in low Earth orbit after the International Space Station. The text also covers possible ESA hardware, research time and cargo mass, and preparatory exchanges so European cargo or crew vehicles might later service a Haven station. It is not a signed Haven flight.
The same release quotes Max Haot saying ESA and Vast are already collaborating on four crewed missions to the International Space Station and Haven-1 in 2027, including the first crewed Haven-1 mission. The release does not name those flights or say they have cleared the station's multilateral crew panel. That sentence is not treated here as four separate booked launches.
What to watch
The schedule conflict is the immediate one. The 19 March 2026 closeout said Haven-1 would be flight-ready in the first quarter of 2027. The Haven-1 page on 19 October still says only 2027, and it still shows solar arrays in acceptance inspection and the flight computer entering electromagnetic testing at headquarters. An early-2027 launch depends on those gates closing, and on the environmental campaign the March update had placed later in 2026, without another public slip. This overview does not treat the first-quarter date as the current baseline.
The next external dates are NASA's. Proposals are due 8 December 2026, awards are expected in spring 2027, and a later task order decides who is certified to sell station services. ESA's three-year study still has to become binding utilization agreements before European Haven flights exist beyond the missions Haot asserted. Named crew seats, the satellite-bus order, Special Programs, and Lunar Programs were checked in primary posts and left out of this narrative because the overview can cite only five sources.