The ISS retirement is a race
NASA plans to deorbit the ISS around 2030, and a field of private stations is racing to be ready before the lights go out in low Earth orbit. We track each contender's development stage — not their press releases.
The International Space Station, continuously inhabited since 2000, is scheduled to be deorbited around 2030 — though a roughly two-year extension is under debate, both to avoid a gap in orbit and to avoid ceding leadership in low Earth orbit to China's Tiangong. Either way, the deadline turns the question of what comes next into a race: NASA does not want a single day without an American destination in orbit, and it has chosen to buy that destination from the private sector. Through its Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program, NASA has funded private designs rather than building its own successor.
The contenders are at very different points. Vast plans to launch its compact Haven-1 station as soon as 2026 — potentially the first commercial space station in orbit — having already completed structural qualification. Axiom Space plans to attach modules to the ISS first, then detach into a free-flying Axiom Station around 2028. Voyager's Starlab, a joint venture with Airbus, is in full-scale development targeting roughly 2028, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef remains the largest design on the books.
This is why our hero metric is development stage, a 1–5 ladder from concept to crewed continuous operations, rather than announced volumes or renderings. Press releases are free; qualification tests, launches and crewed operations are not. A contender's position on that ladder — and whether it moves before 2030 — is the whole story of this field.