An artist’s rendering of the Starlab space station in low Earth orbit.
Voyager Space / Starlab Space LLC
A contract written in the celebs.
Private station Starlab will fly on a Starship rocket later this decade to get to orbit, the businesses’ developing each spacecraft announced on Wednesday.
Starlab – being built by Voyager Space and Airbus through a three way partnership, alongside partners including Northrop Grumman and Hilton – is planned to launch on a single mission of SpaceX’s mammoth rocket.
Starlab represents one in every of the earliest industrial customers to order a Starship launch from SpaceX. The businesses didn’t disclose the launch contract’s value.
The station is one in every of several currently in development by U.S. firms, as NASA prepares to retire the International Space Station in 2030.
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Voyager and Airbus are targeting as early as 2028 for Starlab’s launch. The space station’s four-year development and construction timeline also gives SpaceX time to maneuver forward with Starship, advancing from demonstration flights to launching customer spacecraft.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket is launched from the corporate’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 18, 2023.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
Starlab’s modules are designed to be about 26 feet in diameter, or around twice the diameter of ISS modules – limiting the variety of rockets that would support launching the space station in a single mission.
Voyager Chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor believes launching all of Starlab without delay on Starship is “the fitting option to de-risk our program.”
“You then do not have to do dangerous on-orbit assembly and multiple launches,” Taylor told CNBC.
Voyager and Airbus are undergoing design reviews alongside NASA, as Starlab has previously won funding under the agency’s Business LEO Destinations program.
The businesses are focusing the habitat’s design available on the market for microgravity research in space, with Starlab designed to constantly support a crew of 4 people and last as many as 30 years in orbit.