Giant gearing up to launch its Haven-1 private space station in 2026

The Sundarban

Giant Space’s Haven-1 space station, which is scheduled to launch in 2026. The company posted this photo to X on Oct. 10, 2025.
(Image credit: Giant Space)

Giant is moving into the final stages of building its Haven-1 private space station, readying for launch in 2026, in a transfer that will maybe perhaps commence up a peculiar era in human spaceflight.

In the previous couple of weeks, the California-based totally startup has performed the final weld on the main building of Haven-1, adopted by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article’s hatch and a domed window because the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at spherical 31,000 kilos (14,000 kilograms), would possibly perhaps perhaps be the highest doable spacecraft to steal off atop the rocket. The space station is deliberate to host up to four short-length astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four of us spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some diversified combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

The space station is intended to be a stepping stone into a peculiar era of human spaceflight, according to Giant lead astronaut Drew Feustel, who spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

“If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that’s an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight,” stated Feustel, who’s a mature NASA astronaut. The Falcon 9 for the launch is booked, and liftoff would possibly perhaps maybe perhaps happen as rapidly because the 2d quarter of 2026.

Giant’s rise has been meteoric. Founded in 2021, the company has swelled to spherical 800 workers. With regards to all of its hardware is constructed in-house, with easiest photo voltaic arrays and thrusters outsourced. “When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum.” Feustel recalled. “Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded.”

Haven-1 will not be any longer going to lawful be a private station. This can thought to plot terminate human spaceflight in a peculiar direction, learning lessons from industry tendencies and making the human journey more central.

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The Haven-1 flight article has been painted. Next, key parts including the hatch and domed window will seemingly be integrated sooner than strain and load testing in Mojave, CA. pic.twitter.com/uGdlK67zyLOctober 11, 2025

The company has been taking some pages out of the e-book of SpaceX, which has revolutionized entry to the final frontier and was once the main space company to begin building a industrial automobile that wasn’t designed and developed by NASA.

“What SpaceX did — making it clean and functional at the same time — was something astronauts were skeptical of at first,” Feustel stated. “But we came to appreciate the calmness of the environment.”

Giant has furthermore picked up skills and journey from Elon Musk‘s company. “A lot of our people are former SpaceX employees who wanted to do it again, but this time with a space station.”

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station (ISS) and with a more human-centered gather. The aesthetics, psychology and “Earth tones” of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and amassed. Giant furthermore hired a mature Campbell’s meals developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep gadget that permits crew individuals to adjust the strain to set aside a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, pretty than the tethered sleeping gain manner on the ISS. Visitors to the Giant point to at IAC would possibly perhaps maybe perhaps test out the unusual gadget.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it certainly is furthermore designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a grand more formidable, modular undertaking that Giant hopes would possibly perhaps maybe perhaps substitute the ISS, that will seemingly be deorbited in 2030.

Haven-2’s modules will add a 2d docking port, possess a more in-depth quantity, mounted photo voltaic arrays, and seemingly a 2d window. Its modular gather enables attachment of cargo or future nodes, including a central node designed to launch by capability of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket, which is under style. This greater outpost would be a stepping stone toward man made gravity and long-timeframe habitation.

“Haven-2 will be stretched in length, add another docking port, and become more modular. We can attach cargo supply while the crew is there,” Feustel stated. These modules will need to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with elongated fairings. “The central node can only launch on Starship. It’s an eight-meter-diameter class structure.”

Haven-1 is privately funded, and its launch is paid for. Haven-2’s gather is depending on NASA’s Business LEO Destinations (CLD) program, on the opposite hand. “Once we know the expectations, we can head down with full focus — our architecture is flexible enough to adapt,” Feustel stated.

Again, Haven-2 is a step toward a grander vision. “We had been based for long-timeframe living in space, so artificial gravity,” stated Eva Behrend, Giant’s vice chairman of communications. “But we realized we needed stepping stones. So we said, ‘Let’s just build it and prove we can do it.'”

“We think of ourselves as building destinations in space — places for people to live, work and look back at Earth,” stated Behrend. For now, it be Haven-1 and Haven-2 in low Earth orbit, but Giant has its sights scheme on destinations beyond.

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