An artist’s rendition of the Starlab commercial space station. Photo: Starlab Space LLC

Voyager Space and Airbus Defence and Space plan to form a joint venture to develop and operate the Starlab commercial space station. This comes after Airbus joined Voyager’s Starlab development team earlier this year. 

The companies are pitching the joint venture as a commercial successor for the International Space Station, with U.S. and European collaboration. Starlab will have a European joint venture subsidiary. 

“We are proud to charter the future of space stations with Airbus,” Matthew Kuta, president of Voyager Space, commented. “The International Space Station is widely regarded as the most successful platform for global cooperation in space history, and we are committed to building on this legacy as we move forward with Starlab. We are establishing this joint venture to reliably meet the known demand from global space agencies while opening new opportunities for commercial users.”

Starlab is planned as a free-flying space station to support NASA, global space agencies, and researchers, targeted for launch in 2028. Starlab recently completed a system requirements review (SRR) to evaluate functional, technical, performance, and security requirements with NASA. 

Starlab is partially funded by NASA with $160 million in a Space Act Agreement awarded in 2021 to Voyager subsidiary Nanoracks. NASA awarded contracts as part of its commercial Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) development program to transition from the ISS future commercial space stations. Lockheed Martin is also a part of the project, serving as the manufacturer and technical integrator.