German engineers are involved
US startup working with Airbus on ISS successor
8/2/2023 5:04 p.m
NASA plans to phase out the ISS by 2030. Now Airbus is teaming up with startup Voyager Space to build a new space station. Pharmaceutical research in particular should benefit from this.
The space division of the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus and the US startup Voyager Space want to build a new space station together, which should replace the ISS by the end of this decade. Both companies recently announced the formation of a joint venture. Your space station will be called Starlab.
NASA wants to phase out the ISS by 2030 at the latest, and a privately operated station is to follow. At the end of 2021, NASA had commissioned three companies to develop a concept for this: the space company Blue Origin from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the US company Northrop Gunman and Voyager Space from Denver.
Voyager Space received 160 million dollars (currently around 146 million euros) for this – and now officially brought Airbus on board to build and operate Starlab. The new space station will have a diameter of eight meters. According to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, engineers from the Airbus space division in Bremen are already working on a concept for a space station with a diameter of eight meters; they therefore received a development order from Voyager Space at the end of 2022.
Space tourism is not the goal
A possible launch for Starlab into space is 2028, said Voyager Space boss Dylan Taylor. Research, primarily for the pharmaceutical industry, is to be carried out in the space station under conditions of weightlessness. Space tourism is not the goal. The cooperation between Voyager Space and Airbus Defense and Space will also benefit European space travel, said the head of the Airbus division, Michael Schöllhorn, in a conference call with journalists. “We are also doing this to involve the European Space Agency (ESA) and the member states.” The joint venture will have an offshoot specifically for ESA.
Neither Taylor nor Schöllhorn wanted to disclose which company held which share in the joint venture. Airbus Defense and Space has several locations in Germany, including Bremen. There are also branches in France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.