Vast's Haven Demo spacecraft successfully launched into orbit from Florida, marking a key step toward the startup's private space station ambitions. The mission, riding a SpaceX Falcon 9, extended its solar array shortly after deployment. This pathfinder aims to validate designs for future human-rated habitats.
On Sunday, November 3, 2025, Vast's Haven Demo mission lifted off just after midnight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The half-ton spacecraft shared a ride on SpaceX's Bandwagon 4 mission aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, alongside 17 other satellites, including a South Korean spy satellite and a testbed for Starcloud, a startup collaborating with Nvidia on an orbital data center.
After separation from the rocket, Haven Demo stabilized itself and extended its solar array, capturing the deployment in 4K video that Vast shared on social media. The mission orbits at an altitude of 300 miles (500 kilometers) and will test the company's computer, power, software, guidance and control, propulsion, and radio systems. It also provides practice for Vast's ground stations and mission control teams.
Vast CEO Max Haot celebrated the launch on X, posting: “What a launch night and team at Vast! And thanks for the ride, SpaceX. Haven Demo’s mission success has turned us into a proven spacecraft company. The next step will be to become an actual commercial space station company next year. Something no one has achieved yet.”
Backed by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, Vast is pursuing an iterative path to a commercial low-Earth orbit outpost, competing for NASA contracts. Following Haven Demo, the company plans to launch Haven-1, a single-module human-rated habitat, no earlier than May 2026 on another Falcon 9. The 33-foot-long (10.1 meters) and 14-foot-wide (4.4 meters) module offers 1,600 cubic feet (45 cubic meters) of habitable volume—smaller than an International Space Station module but five times larger than SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
Haven-1's structure has completed pressure and load testing in Mojave, California, and is undergoing final preparations in Long Beach, including integration of life support, power, and propulsion systems. It will then head to NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio for environmental testing simulating space conditions, before final preparations in Florida. Once in orbit, Haven-1 will host two-week crew visits via SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Vast's roadmap extends to Haven-2, a multi-module station for larger crews in the 2030s.
The Haven Demo carries systems architecturally similar to Haven-1, such as identical solar arrays and a subset of its propulsion setup, helping validate designs in real space conditions.