US firm Vast keen to use Indian rockets for rides to its planned space station

New Delhi: US-based company Vast, planning to launch the world's first commercial space station next year, has evinced interest in using Indian rockets to transport crew members to its orbital laboratory.

Vast CEO Max Hoat met the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) leadership team on the sidelines of the Global Space Exploration Conference here to discuss possible collaborations in the area of space technology.

The space-habitation company is in the race to build a space station that will be the successor to the International Space Station, which will be retired by 2031.

The California-based company plans to launch Haven-1, a single-module space station, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in May 2026.

"Right now, we are on track with our launch for May 2026," Hoat told PTI in an interview.

Vast plans to conduct a series of tests on the space station, before flying astronauts to the orbital laboratory by July next year. The first module of Haven-2, a much larger space station, is expected to be launched in 2028.

Hoat is excited about India's Gaganyaan project, which plans to undertake a human spaceflight by early 2027, and keen to host science payloads on the space station.

"We are interested in flying payloads in science from India. The other interest we have is the possibility of using Gaganyaan rockets as a transport service for our space station," he said.

India's heavy-lift Launch Vehicle Mark-III is scheduled to take the Gaganyaan mission to a low-earth orbit by early 2027. The LVM-3 rocket has been used for commercial missions, such as the launching of OneWeb satellites in orbit.

In 2023, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) signed a five-year, unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with Vast, with the stated purpose of helping the company's "concept maturation and eventual implementation of space station modules".

The Haven-1 spacecraft has a 45-metre-cubed volume and is designed to support up to four crew members for missions of an average of two weeks in length.

It consists of four crew quarters for sleeping, several mid-deck lockers for science modules, a common area with a deployable table and multiple crew interfaces.

"Right now, we are solely focused on the SpaceX offering, but we are interested to hear whether there will be a competitive, reliable, safe option that we can use to bring our customers using the Gaganyaan vehicle to our space station," Hoat said.

As India plans to have its own space station, Vast is also open to collaboration with the ISRO for the use of Haven facilities.

"Space is one of the most amazing collaborative fields in the world. And so, we are extremely open to ideas. Some of the ideas that were being discussed is, you know, maybe we can offer access to our space station but also get access to that (India's) space station and share capacity or share size," Hoat said.

"We definitely see a lot of opportunities if, obviously, India and the ISRO welcome us to collaborate, especially as our two countries are politically very friendly," he said.

Hoat said the two other human-spaceflight-capable countries -- Russia and China -- are not in the same acceptable region for the current US politics.

"So that creates a unique situation where we might have two human spaceflight capable countries that can work together," Hoat said.