Background 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. 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).
Development The Starlab project was initially proposed in October 2021 by
Nanoracks, its majority shareholder
Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space), and
Lockheed Martin to respond to the
Commercial LEO Destinations program (CLD) of the American space agency, NASA. 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. 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 originally developed in the 1990s by NASA, during the
Transhab project, and later extended by
Bigelow Aerospace) to be built by
Lockheed Martin and by a
service module, providing energy (
solar panels) and propulsion. “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. Indeed, the technology of inflatable modules is considered insufficiently mature and safe, compared to that of rigid metallic modules, for use on a main crewed module. 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. 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”. The interior design of the station, in particular the astronauts' living spaces, was assigned to the hospitality company
Hilton Worldwide in September 2022. 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. On January 9, 2024, Voyager Space and Airbus finalized their agreement to form Starlab Space LLC, their joint venture to design and build Starlab. On January 31, Starlab Space selected
Starship as their launch vehicle for the space station. In February 2026, the project was announced to have completed its Commercial Critical Design Review (CCDR) with NASA. ==Design==