Axiom Space gets ready for its commercial space station

NATIONWIDE — As the International Space Station is set to retire in 2030, Axiom Space is hoping to be one of the few commercial companies to have a space station that will replace the famed floating laboratory.

The International Space Station is set to deorbit in 2030 after three decades of operations since the first Expedition 1 mission on Nov. 2, 2000.

Last year, NASA selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will safely deorbit the International Space Station to an unpopulated section of the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. space agency will give the California-based company $843 million to modify its Dragon capsule to bring the aging space station back down to Earth.

However, before the space station goes to its watery grave, Texas-based company Axiom Space plans to use it to birth its own space station called Axiom Station.

Getting to know Axiom Station

Axiom Station will eventually replace the International Space Station and will allow countries’ space agencies, like NASA, and private space companies to continue their experiments and missions.

Axiom Space Senior Vice President and Axiom Station Deputy Program Manager Aaron Tullos said that currently, his company is in talks with customers.

“This is forward work. Axiom Space continues to have discussions with customers looking to utilize Axiom Station in different ways,” Tullos shared with Spectrum News in an email interview.  

But Axiom Station needs to be built first. Tullos said that his company plans to attach Axiom Station’s first module, Payload, Power, and Thermal Module (PPTM), to the International Space Station in the next few years.

PPTM will allow the transfer of science, equipment and payloads from the International Space Station to this new module, which Tullos said will help preserve the hardware and allows the continuation of research and experiments that are being done on the International Space Station.

“PPTM will launch no earlier than 2027 after integration is complete, becoming the only commercial module allowed to berth to the ISS before the ISS retires,” Tullos explained.

The main structure of this module has just been welded at the Thales Alenia Space development facility in Italy and the PTTM is going through additional testing before being sent to Houston later this year for integration, he shared.

The next part of the Axiom Station will launch no earlier than 2028. The Habitat Module One, also called Hab-1, is nearly finished at Thales Alenia Space, and will undergo tests before going to Houston, Tullos said.

Once in Houston, additional work will be done before going into space.

“Hab-1 will launch and rendezvous with the PPTM in orbit, where the two modules will dock and form a commercial space station ready for crewed operations independent of the ISS,” he said.

As the name suggests, Hab-1 is where a crew of up to four astronauts can live and work.

The PTTM module will dock with the International Space Station but will detach at some point to connect with Hab-1, Tullos said.

Tullos confirmed that no crew has been selected yet for Axiom Station when it is operational.

Eventually, other modules will attach to Axiom Station: An airlock module (AL), another habitat module (Hab-2) and a research and manufacturing module that will also have an Earth observatory (RMF).

Tullos said his company’s station will allow for the expanding of global access to space.

“Axiom Station is designed for scalable growth for future modules and additional capacity for crew and research,” shared Tullos, who added, “Axiom Space is building era-defining infrastructure capable of expanding global access to space, creating unprecedented economic opportunities, and achieving strategic U.S. objectives by maintaining a continuous human presence in LEO. Using a modular design, innovative solutions, commercial applications, and 25 years of informed perspective, Axiom Station is positioned to accomplish all of these goals.”

During the company’s Axiom 4 launch in June of this year, Axiom Space’s co-founder Kam Ghaffarian shared with Spectrum News about his company’s space station.

“So, we are building the first private commercial space station that will replace the International Space Station,” Ghaffarian said. “And looking forward by end of 2026, early 2027 to launch our module and we are the only company that (can) connect to ISS and work jointly while ISS is in orbit together.”

Others want to have their space stations too

Axiom Space is not the only company out there hoping to make its mark in the commercial space station industry.

Sierra Space is another company hoping to send up its space station to orbit Earth.

Called Orbital Reef, the space station will use the company’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) inflatable habitation modules.

In 2023, LIFE Chief Engineer and Senior Director of Engineering Shawn Buckley explained to Spectrum News why the company purposely blew up one of the habitat units.

Vast Space is also planning to build its Haven-1 space station, with a planned launch in 2026.

Axiom Space is the only station that will dock with the International Space Station before detaching.