French astronaut Arnaud Prost is about to make history—not by setting foot on another world, but by launching into a wholly new era of human spaceflight. Vast, a California-based aerospace company founded by cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, just announced Prost will fly on the inaugural crewed mission to Haven-1, a commercial space station scheduled to launch in early 2027. If it reaches orbit on schedule, Haven-1 will become the first commercially owned and operated space station in history, marking the end of an era dominated by government agencies and the beginning of one defined by private enterprise, lower costs, and independence from Russian space infrastructure.
For the past 25 years, the International Space Station has been humanity's home in orbit—a collaborative achievement of Russia, the United States, Europe, and Japan. But that partnership is fraying. The ISS, now aging and increasingly costly to maintain, is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions have intensified pressure on Western nations to reduce their reliance on Russian launch services for crewed missions, particularly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Haven-1 arrives at precisely this inflection point, offering a path forward that both replaces what's aging and sidesteps troublesome dependencies.
Vast CEO Max Haot frames the moment clearly: "This is an important milestone in a new era in crewed spaceflight that is less expensive—and less reliant on Russia." During his three-week mission aboard Haven-1, Prost will conduct systems tests and prepare the station for the scientific experiments that will follow—work similar to what astronauts have performed on the ISS for decades. Separately, Vast announced it will also send French astronaut Thomas Pesquet to the ISS next year, and it has plans to establish European headquarters in Paris, signaling its ambitions to become a truly international player.
The economics are striking. Haven-1 will launch with a single module, compared to the ISS's 16. Over its three years in orbit, it will host four two-week missions. That lean design is intentional. Vast's longer-term vision, Haven-2, will eventually expand to nine modules—but the company plans to deploy them gradually, making each module cost "five to 10 times lower" than ISS modules, which often exceeded a billion dollars. "This will allow us to increase the number of crewed flights and offer more attractive prices to our customers," Haot said. By 2030, the company aims to have four modules in orbit, enough to support six-month missions.
Vast enters a crowded competitive landscape. Both Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin are developing commercial stations of their own. Yet Haot argues Vast holds a crucial advantage: contracts with NASA and a claimed two-year lead over rivals. For all its missions, Vast will rely on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsule—a dependency Haot embraces rather than apologizes for. SpaceX's emphasis on speed and rocket reusability, he argues, represents the future of spaceflight. Without Dragon, he notes, "Vast would not exist. And the United States and Europe would still be dependent on Russia to send humans into space."
The Haven-1 mission represents far more than a single crewed flight. It signals that the era of expensive, government-led space stations is ending, and a faster, more competitive, more economically efficient era is beginning. When Prost launches in 2027, he will be opening a door that the entire space industry is preparing to walk through.