NASA has awarded Vast the contract to fly the sixth Private Astronaut Mission to the International Space Station, a deal that positions the relatively young company alongside Axiom Space as one of only two firms trusted to send private crews to the orbiting laboratory. The mission is targeted for no earlier than summer 2027, with a crew of four and a stay of up to 14 days. For a company that has yet to fly humans in space, the selection represents a significant vote of confidence from the agency and a sharp acceleration of NASA’s strategy to hand over routine low-Earth orbit operations to the private sector.
Vast Joins an Exclusive Club
Until now, Axiom Space had been the sole operator selected to fly private crews to the ISS under NASA’s formal Private Astronaut Mission program. That changed when NASA signed an order with Vast for the sixth PAM, as detailed in the agency’s announcement of the company’s new mission award, breaking Axiom’s monopoly on the procurement line. The selection means Vast will propose four crew members for review by NASA and its international partners before the mission can proceed. If the crew clears that process, the company will manage a flight lasting up to 14 days aboard the station, targeted for no earlier than summer 2027, and will have to integrate its operations seamlessly with long-standing station procedures.
The timing matters. NASA had already tapped Axiom for the fifth PAM, which is targeted for no earlier than January 2027. That means two separate private missions could reach the ISS within roughly six months of each other, each run by a different company and each drawing on overlapping pools of commercial customers and research partners. The agency noted it was finalizing the sixth mission order even as it announced the fifth, a sign that the procurement pipeline is now running fast enough to overlap selections. Competition between providers could drive down costs and push both firms to deliver stronger science and commercial returns per flight, while also giving NASA more flexibility to shape mission content and cadence.
Why NASA Wants More Private Operators
NASA’s broader goal is to transition routine human activity in low-Earth orbit from a government-run enterprise to a commercially sustained market. The agency’s evolving commercial space strategy explicitly frames private astronaut missions as a tool for stimulating demand, testing business models, and preparing for the day when the ISS is retired and replaced by privately owned stations. Each PAM flight is not just a trip to space; it is a stress test for the commercial infrastructure that NASA expects to rely on in the late 2020s and beyond, including life-support systems, training pipelines, and on-orbit services that may eventually be purchased “as a service” rather than developed in-house.
Adding Vast to the rotation serves that strategy directly. A single provider creates dependency. Two providers create a market, or at least the beginning of one. The Johnson procurement office manages the PAM acquisition process, and the fact that it now supports multiple awardees suggests the agency is serious about building competitive pressure into the program rather than simply renewing contracts with a familiar partner. For researchers and commercial customers hoping to book time on the ISS, a second operator could mean more frequent flight opportunities, more tailored mission profiles, and potentially better pricing as companies try to differentiate their offerings with specialized training, outreach, or on-orbit capabilities.
The 2027 Timeline and Its Tensions
A summer 2027 target date sounds distant, but the gap between selection and flight is shorter than it appears when stacked against the complexity of human spaceflight. Vast must finalize its crew roster, pass NASA’s medical and training requirements, secure a launch vehicle, and coordinate with station operations to avoid conflicts with other visiting spacecraft. The ISS schedule is already dense with cargo resupply missions, crew rotations, and spacewalks, and every visiting vehicle must be choreographed to preserve safety margins. Slotting a 14-day private mission into that calendar requires months of planning even after the crew is approved, including simulations, emergency procedure drills, and detailed integration of research timelines with station resources.
There is a reasonable critique that the pace of private missions still lags behind what the commercial space industry promised a decade ago. SpaceX, which provides the launch hardware for these flights, can turn around Crew Dragon capsules relatively quickly. The bottleneck is not the rocket; it is the station itself, which has limited docking ports, finite crew support capacity, and safety protocols that do not bend for commercial timelines. NASA’s approach of scheduling one or two private missions per year reflects those physical constraints more than any lack of ambition. The real question is whether this cadence can increase meaningfully before the ISS reaches the end of its operational life, currently expected around 2030, and how that cadence will interact with the ramp-up of commercial stations that aim to take over low-Earth orbit operations.
What Vast’s Selection Means for ISS Science
Private astronaut missions are not space tourism in the traditional sense. NASA requires PAM crews to carry out research and technology demonstrations during their stays, leveraging the station’s microgravity environment for experiments that cannot be replicated on Earth. While the specific experiments for Vast’s sixth mission have not been disclosed, the agency’s broader science portfolio, spanning climate and environmental work in Earth science, planetary research, and astrophysics, provides a deep bench of potential projects that private crews can support. Microgravity research in areas like protein crystallization, fluid dynamics, and materials science has historically benefited from additional crew time on the station, and private astronauts can extend that bandwidth beyond what government crews alone can provide.
The more interesting long-term effect may be indirect. Each private mission that successfully completes a research agenda strengthens the case that non-NASA astronauts can do productive science in orbit. That track record matters because NASA’s post-ISS strategy depends on commercial stations attracting enough paying customers, including researchers, to survive financially. If Vast and Axiom can demonstrate that their crews reliably produce useful data, it lowers the perceived risk for universities, pharmaceutical companies, and other institutions considering microgravity work. NASA has already experimented with new ways to highlight such results, including streaming and on-demand programming through its NASA+ platform and curated series content that showcase how space-based research connects to everyday life, which in turn can help private missions build public and investor support.
A Second Provider Changes the Math
Most coverage of private astronaut missions focuses on the spectacle of civilians reaching orbit. The more consequential development is structural. With two companies now holding PAM contracts, NASA has created the conditions for a supplier market in crewed ISS access. That is a fundamentally different arrangement than the cost-plus contracts that defined human spaceflight for decades, in which a single prime contractor often dominated a program. Vast and Axiom will each need to demonstrate value not just to NASA but to the private customers who fund their seats, and that dual pressure tends to produce better outcomes than a sole-source arrangement. Companies may experiment with different training philosophies, onboard services, or outreach packages, giving customers more choice in how their missions are designed and executed.
There are limits to how much competition two providers can generate, especially when both depend on SpaceX for launch services and must operate within the same station constraints. True market dynamics would require multiple launch options and, eventually, multiple destinations in low-Earth orbit. Still, the step from one to two providers is meaningful. It gives NASA leverage in negotiations, provides redundancy if one operator experiences delays, and sends a signal to the broader industry that there is room for new entrants with compelling business cases. Vast’s selection for the sixth Private Astronaut Mission is therefore more than a single contract award; it is a marker that the ISS is evolving from a government outpost into a shared commercial platform, with all the complexity—and opportunity—that shift entails.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
