The road ahead
Space travel moves fast. This feed pulls current headlines automatically, and below it you'll find the milestones shaping the next decade of human spaceflight.
Latest space-travel headlines
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What's coming next
Announced targets slip often — read them as direction, not appointment.
Apeiron targets its first customer flight
Virgin Galactic's first Delta-class ship arrived at Spaceport America on October 28, 2026. Avionics validation and flight tests still come first; the $750,000 sales tranche is sold out, and no replacement offer is public yet.
NASA expects its next station-contract awards
NASA released the final solicitation on October 9, 2026, seeking end-to-end commercial station and transportation plans. Proposals are due December 8, with multiple early-development awards expected.
Vast assembles its first private ISS crew
Thomas Pesquet, Aleš Svoboda and Adrianos Golemis are slated for Vast-PAM-1, the sixth NASA-supported private astronaut mission to the ISS. The assignments remain subject to station-partner approval, and a fourth crew member is still to be announced.
Haven-1 targets first crewed operations
Vast aims to launch its single-module Haven-1 and begin short Crew Dragon visits — the earliest current target among the planned private stations.
Artemis III becomes a rehearsal, not a landing
NASA restructured Artemis III into an Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking test between Orion and commercial landers — pushing the first crewed Moon landing to Artemis IV or V in 2028.
Axiom targets its first station module
Axiom says its first module is in final assembly and planned for 2028. A second, expected less than a year later, would join it to form a four-person free-flying station.
The ISS retires
NASA has finalized plans to deorbit the station by the end of 2030, with the reentry burn possibly slipping into early 2031, over a remote stretch of the Pacific — handing the baton to commercial outposts.
The Mars question
Crewed Mars missions remain a stated goal, but timelines are genuinely uncertain — a far harder problem than anything attempted so far.