NASA Awards Another $100 Million for Private Space Stations

There's a "space race" of sorts in private space stations, and NASA has been backing the progress of some of these companies.  The agency has been pushing the idea of developing space stations to take the place of the International Space Station as its "best used by" date of 2030 approaches.  The way they've been pushing is by financial incentives and development milestones, apparently beginning in December of 2021. 

Last week, they increased their contributions.

With the International Space Station (ISS) set for retirement in 2030, NASA has Space Act Agreements with Blue Origin and Voyager Space to develop concepts for a new orbiting lab as part of the space agency's Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations (CLD) program. On. Jan. 5. NASA announced modifications to its existing agreements, including new technical milestones and reallocated funding.
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With the announcement, Blue Origin received an additional $42 million on top of its original $130 million award to develop the Orbital Reef space station concept, which involves Sierra Space, Boeing, Amazon and a number of other companies. The increase includes additional milestones for subsystem design reviews and technology maturation, as well as work on the station’s life support systems, including water filtration and atmospheric monitoring, according to the statement. 

Voyager Space, which is developing the Starlab orbiting complex with Nanoracks, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, received an additional $57.5 million to its original $160 million award. The new funding will be used for various development milestones focused on operations, assembly, integration and testing, as well as a rendezvous and proximity operations demonstration.

The milestones mentioned in those paragraphs refer to key technology and risk reduction areas as a way to help the contractors achieve the things they recognize as important goals along the way to their on-orbit space stations.  

Did you notice the mention of Northrup Grumman and did it bring to mind a story from just this past November?  The story that they were changing their relationship with Voyager Space and dropping out of Space Station development?  This is part of that - the additional funding being provided to Voyager Space will also be used to upgrade Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo spacecraft so that it can dock with the Starlab station.  

Blue Origin's Concept Sketch of the Orbital Reef Space Station.

Final words to a NASA spokesperson:

"We continue to see an immense amount of dedication from our partners," Angela Hart, manager of NASA's Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program, said in the statement. "The agency is committed to continuing to work with industry [partners] with the goal [of] having one or more stations in orbit to ensure competition, lower costs, and meet the demand of NASA and other customers."

One or more stations in orbit by 2030?  Cool.  Remember this doesn't include Axiom Space or Vast so consider it a good start.  It seems like if I make it to 90 we might see things that were talked about as being reality by the time I was 40.