 Starlab logo | |
| Station statistics | |
|---|---|
| Launch | 2028 (planned) |
| Carrier rocket | Starship |
| Length | ≥8 m (26 ft) |
| Width | 8 m (26 ft) |
Starlab is a planned LEO (low Earth orbit) commercial space station, which is expected to launch no earlier than 2028. It is currently being designed by Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space (majority shareholder in Nanoracks) and Airbus. [1] It is planned to be launched before the decommissioning of the ISS.
In March 2021, NASA presented the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program which aims to support the creation of private Earth-orbiting space stations in which the agency would only be one of the customers (tenant or other form of contract), with companies retaining ownership of their stations. This is a new outsourcing of the agency's space program, following on from the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services/Commercial Resupply Services (cargo transport) and Commercial Crew Development/Commercial Crew Program (crew transport) programs. [2] These stations will have to take over from the International Space Station after its deorbiting, planned for the early 2030s. For its part, NASA is focusing on its lunar exploration projects (Artemis program with Lunar Gateway station and Moon landings).
The Starlab project was initially proposed in October 2021 by Nanoracks, its majority shareholder Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin to respond to the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program of the American space agency, NASA. [3]
The team of companies developing Starlab was one of three teams selected in December 2021 to continue their work with grants from NASA, i.e. $160 million, the two other competing teams, Blue Origin (associated with Sierra Space (carve-out from Sierra Nevada Corporation), Boeing and Redwire) and Northrop Grumman (associated with Dynetics) were granted $130 million and $125.6 million, respectively, subject to the approval by the United States Congress. [4] [5] [6] [7] [ needs update ] These Space Act Agreements are the first phase of two by which NASA aims to maintain an uninterrupted U.S. presence in low-Earth orbit by transitioning from the International Space Station to other platforms.
Initially, the proposed station design consisted of a docking node module surrounded by a large inflatable module (technology developed in the 1990s by NASA, during the Transhab project, and continued by Bigelow Aerospace) to be built by Lockheed Martin and by a service module, providing energy (solar panels) and propulsion. [3]
At the beginning of January 2023, it was announced that Airbus Defence and Space was joining the project, which would facilitate the expansion of the station's customer base to Europeans, notably members of the European Space Agency. [8] [9] “Working with Airbus we will expand Starlab’s ecosystem to serve the European Space Agency (ESA) and its member state space agencies to continue their microgravity research in LEO,” Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive of Voyager Space, said in the announcement. The company must provide its “technical design support and expertise” and it is later revealed that the inflatable module, developed by Lockheed Martin, is abandoned and replaced by a rigid metallic module on which the skills of the European group will be called upon. [10] [11] Indeed, the technology of inflatable modules is considered insufficiently mature and safe,[ according to whom? ] compared to that of rigid metallic modules, for use on a main crewed module. [12]
On August 2, 2023, the partnership between the companies was modified to become a formal joint venture between Airbus Defense and Space and Voyager Space, which will be responsible for the construction and operation of the station. [13] [10] [14] [15] [16] Lockheed Martin is no longer mentioned, its role having been taken over by Airbus.
In June 2023, the project passed a Systems Requirements Review (SRR) examination conducted with NASA assessing technical maturity and “functional, technical, performance, and security requirements”. [14] [17]
The interior design of the station, in particular the astronauts' living spaces, was assigned to the hospitality company Hilton Worldwide in September 2022. [18]
On October 4, 2023, Northrop Grumman announced that it was joining the Starlab project and abandoning its own station project. The company plans in particular to develop an autonomous docking system for its Cygnus spacecraft, which will resupply the station. [19]
On January 9, 2024, Voyager Space and Airbus finalized their agreement to form Starlab Space LLC, their joint venture to design and build Starlab. [20] On January 31, Starlab Space selected Starship as their launch vehicle for the space station. [1]
In April 2024 it was reported the design stage of the project was proceeding on track with launch still estimated in 2028. [21]
The space station will consist of two modules: a service module providing propulsion and energy with solar panels and a module serving as habitat and laboratory and having docking ports, with a diameter of 8 m (compared to approximately 4 m for the ISS modules), all of which will total “half the volume” of the ISS [15] (i.e. 450 m3, the pressurized volume of the ISS being 900 m3, the previous design included 340 m3, and also features a 60 kW power and propulsion element, a large robotic arm for servicing cargo and external payloads [22] ) and therefore a length of at least 8 m as well (volume of the cylinder).
It will be launched in a single launch in 2028 on SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle, for reasons of size (payload fairing of more than 8 m in diameter) and mass. [1]
The station will be able to support 100% of the payload capacity of the ISS with the capacity to conduct more than 400 experiments per year. [9]
The station will be able to support four astronauts. [23]
The station will serve as a weightlessness research laboratory, particularly for the pharmaceutical industry, and will be open to American and European astronauts, but will not be open to space tourism. [15]
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew in orbit for an extended period of time and is therefore a type of space habitat. It lacks major propulsion or landing systems. An orbital station or an orbital space station is an artificial satellite. Stations must have docking ports to allow other spacecraft to dock to transfer crew and supplies. The purpose of maintaining an orbital outpost varies depending on the program. Space stations have most often been launched for scientific purposes, but military launches have also occurred.
Bigelow Aerospace was an American space design and manufacturing company which closed its doors in 2020. It was an aeronautics and outer space technology company which manufactured and developed expandable space station modules. Bigelow Aerospace was founded by Robert Bigelow in 1998, and was based in North Las Vegas, Nevada. It was funded in large part by the profit Bigelow gained through his ownership of the hotel chain, Budget Suites of America.
The Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) is a three-story industrial building at Kennedy Space Center for the manufacture and processing of flight hardware, modules, structural components and solar arrays of the International Space Station, and future space stations and commercial spacecraft. It was built in 1992 at the space complex's industrial area, just east of the Operations and Checkout Building.
Inflatable habitats or expandable habitats are pressurized tent-like structures capable of supporting life in outer space whose internal volume increases after launch. They have frequently been proposed for use in space applications to provide a greater volume of living space for a given mass.
The US Orbital Segment (USOS) is the name given to the components of the International Space Station (ISS) constructed and operated by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The segment consists of eleven pressurized components and various external elements, almost all of which were delivered by the Space Shuttle.
The Bigelow Next-Generation Commercial Space Station was a private orbital space station under conceptual development by Bigelow Aerospace in the 2000s and 2010s. Previous concepts of the space station had included multiple modules, such as two B330 expandable spacecraft modules as well as a central docking node, propulsion, solar arrays, and attached crew capsules. However it was also suggested that each B330 can operate as an independent space station. Attaching a B330 to the International Space Station or flying a B330 alone have been suggested by Robert Bigelow.
A space tug is a type of spacecraft used to transfer spaceborne cargo from one orbit to another orbit with different energy characteristics. The term can include expendable upper stages or spacecraft that are not necessarily a part of their launch vehicle. However, it can also refer to a spacecraft that transports payload already in space to another location in outer space, such as in the Space Transportation System concept. An example would be moving a spacecraft from a low Earth orbit (LEO) to a higher-energy orbit like a geostationary transfer orbit, a lunar transfer, or an escape trajectory.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an experimental expandable space station module developed by Bigelow Aerospace, under contract to NASA, for testing as a temporary module on the International Space Station (ISS) from 2016 to at most 2028, when the contract can not be extended any further. It arrived at the ISS on 10 April 2016, was berthed to the station on 16 April 2016, and was expanded and pressurized on 28 May 2016. Although originally planned to be a two year test, it has exceeded expectations and is used as additional cargo storage. The module is under ownership of NASA after Bigelow Aerospace suspended operations in 2021.
Nanoracks LLC is a private in-space services company which builds space hardware and in-space repurposing tools. The company also facilitates experiments and launches of CubeSats to Low Earth Orbit.
DreamUp PBC is a Public-benefit corporation that offers space-based educational activities. DreamUp is a spin-off and sister company of Nanoracks LLC, a private spaceflight company. Nanoracks gives DreamUp access to research opportunities on the U.S. National Lab on board the International Space Station.
Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom Space, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The project to create the International Space Station required the utilization and/or construction of new and existing manufacturing facilities around the world, mostly in the United States and Europe. The agencies overseeing the manufacturing involved NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency. Hundreds of contractors working for the five space agencies were assigned the task of fabricating the modules, trusses, experiments and other hardware elements for the station.
SpaceX CRS-21, also known as SpX-21, was a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station which launched on 6 December 2020. The mission was contracted by NASA and was flown by SpaceX using a Cargo Dragon 2. This was the first flight for SpaceX under NASA's CRS Phase 2 contract awarded in January 2016. This was also the first Cargo Dragon of the new Dragon 2 variant, as well as the first Cargo Dragon flight that was docked at the same time as a Crew Dragon spacecraft. This mission used Booster B1058.4, becoming the first NASA mission to reuse a booster previously used on a non-NASA mission. This was also first time SpaceX launched a NASA payload on a booster with more than one previous flight.
NG-14, previously known as OA-14, was the fifteenth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its fourteenth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract with NASA. The mission was launched on 3 October 2020, at 01:16:14 UTC.
Axiom Orbital Segment or Axiom Segment are the planned modular components of the International Space Station (ISS) designed by Axiom Space for commercial space activities. Axiom Space gained initial NASA approval for the venture in January 2020. Axiom Space was later awarded the contract by NASA on February 28, 2020. This orbital station will be separated from the ISS to become a modular space station, Axiom Station, after the ISS is decommissioned.
Orbital Reef is an under development low Earth orbit (LEO) space station being designed by Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Sierra Space for commercial space activities and space tourism uses. Blue Origin has referred to it as a "mixed-use business park". The companies released preliminary concepts for the station on 25 October 2021. The station is being designed to support 10 persons in 830 m3 of volume. As of March 2022, the station was projected to be operational by 2027.
The Commercial LEO Destinations program is a public/private partnership program of the NASA, to help facilitate the building of private commercial space stations (CSSs) in low Earth orbit.
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Notes: † Never inhabited due to launch or on-orbit failure, ‡ Part of the Almaz military program, ° Never inhabited, lacks docking mechanism. | |||||||||