US commercial space station startup Vast has signed a contract with The Exploration Company for a cargo mission to the company’s second Haven space station.
The Exploration Company is developing a multi-use cargo spacecraft called Nyx that is capable of delivering payloads of up to 4,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit destinations. Last month, the company was awarded an initial €25 million in funding from the European Space Agency (ESA) to complete a demonstration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the agency’s LEO Cargo Return Service initiative. An initial subscale prototype of Nyx is expected to be flown aboard the inaugural Ariane 6 flight early next month.
The Exploration Company and Vast signed the cargo services agreement during the ILA Berlin exhibition last week. Under the agreement, the mission will be flown aboard Nyx Earth spacecraft in 2028 to Vast’s second Haven space station.
“We are grateful for the trust Vast is placing in our Nyx cargo system,” said The Exploration Company CEO Helene Huby in a statement. “We are excited to support future Haven commercial space station operations as Vast fields a replacement to the International Space Station before the end of the decade.”
A growing order book
Vast is the third commercial space station operator to sign an agreement with The Exploration Company for cargo missions to future LEO destinations. In September 2023, the company signed an agreement with Axiom Space for cargo missions to the company’s future space station beginning no earlier than late 2027. In late May, The Exploration Company signed an agreement with the Starlab consortium for three cargo missions. With the addition of the ESA-contracted ISS demonstration mission, the company now has an order backlog of at least six Nyx missions.
Update: This article was updated to remove reference to the Vast-contracted Nyx mission being launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. While the mission’s launch vehicle had been shared in an initial draft of the official press release, an updated version removed it. No reason was given for the change. A second update specified that the mission will be to Vast’s second planned space station and not Haven-1.
