The Commercial LEO Destinations program (CLD, or Commercial Destinations in Low Earth Orbit, or Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Development Program) is a public/private partnership program of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

to help facilitate the building of private commercial space stations (CSSs) in low Earth orbit.

Background

must face the planned end of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

, whose deorbit is planned for the early 2030s. The agency therefore wants to have destinations in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

ready to take over from the ISS. However, NASA no longer wishes to design, build and operate the stations but, rather, to be one of the customers who would use such a station if it were built and operated by private actors. NASA therefore proposed in 2021 to reuse the same formula used successfully for the delivery of cargo and crews to low orbit with the

Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) was a NASA program to spur the development of Private spaceflight, private spacecraft and launch vehicles for deliveries to the International Space Station (ISS). Launched in 2006, COTS successful ...

Commercial Resupply Services Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first phase of CRS contracts (CRS-1) were sign ...

(cargo transport) and

Commercial Crew Development Development of the Commercial Crew Program (CCDev) began in the second round of the program, which was rescoped from a smaller technology development program for human spaceflight to a competitive development program that would produce the space ...

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides Private spaceflight, commercially operated human spaceflight, crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between t ...

(transport crews). Furthermore, NASA is focusing on operating its own lunar exploration projects:

Lunar Gateway The Lunar Gateway, or simply Gateway, is a planned space station which is to be assembled in orbit around the Moon. The Gateway is intended to serve as a communication hub, science laboratory, and habitation module for astronauts as part ...

station, with contracts to private companies to develop and provide

space suit A space suit (or spacesuit) is an environmental suit used for protection from the harsh environment of outer space, mainly from its vacuum as a highly specialized pressure suit, but also its temperature extremes, as well as radiation and ...

s ( Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services program), the placement of payloads onto the Moon (

Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon. Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources, test in situ resource ...

program) and the landing of astronauts (

Human Landing System A Human Landing System (HLS) is a spacecraft in the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Artemis program that is expected to land humans on the Moon. These are being ...

program). NASA also began a program in 2014,

NextSTEP NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

Appendix I, which has the aim to add additional modules to the ISS.

Axiom Space Axiom Space, Inc., also known as Axiom Space, is an American privately funded space infrastructure developer headquartered in Houston, Texas. Founded in 2016 by former CEO Michael T. Suffredini and Kam Ghaffarian, the company first flew a spa ...

won a 2021 bid process and was awarded a contract $140 million to build, and then attach, its modules to the International Space Station. In December 2024, Axiom Space revised its station assembly plans to enable the autonomous operation of the

Axiom Station Axiom Station is a planned modular space station designed by Houston, Texas-based Axiom Space for commercial space activities. Axiom Space gained initial NASA approval for the venture in January 2020. Axiom Space was later awarded the contr ...

after two launches, with only one module being attached to the ISS in 2027 before separating about one year later. A previously projected part of the program, NextSTEP Appendix K, was to select standalone station projects but was canceled in August 2020.

Setting up the program

In March 2021,

created the Commercial LEO Destinations program which aims to support the design, build and operation of private Earth-orbiting space stations in which the agency would be just one of the customers (tenant or other form of contract), with companies retaining ownership of their stations.

Participants

Several companies indicated initial interest in the program during 2021, including

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

Blue Origin Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. is an American space technology company headquartered in Kent, Washington. The company operates the suborbital New Shepard rocket and the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. In addition to producing engines for its own ...

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

Collins Aerospace Collins Aerospace is an American technology company that is one of the world's largest suppliers of aerospace and defense products. It was formed in 2018 from the merger of Rockwell Collins and UTC Aerospace Systems. Headquartered in Charlotte, ...

Firefly Aerospace Firefly Aerospace, Inc. is an American private aerospace firm based in Cedar Park, Texas, that develops small- and medium-lift launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit. The current company was formed when the assets of the former co ...

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales and fifth largest in the Unit ...

, ispace,

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

Moog Inc. Moog Inc. ( ) is an American-based designer and manufacturer of electric, electro-hydraulic and hydraulic motion, controls and systems for applications in aerospace, defense, industrial and medical devices. The company operates under four segmen ...

Nanoracks Nanoracks LLC is an American private in-space services company which builds space hardware and in-space repurposing tools. The company also facilitates experiments and launches of CubeSats to Low Earth Orbit. Nanoracks's main office is in H ...

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

Redwire Redwire Corporation is an American aerospace manufacturer and space infrastructure technology company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida. The company was formed on June 1, 2020, by the private equity firm AE Industrial ...

RUAG Space Beyond Gravity is the space-oriented segment of the Swiss technology group RUAG. At a total of thirteen sites in Switzerland (Bern, Zurich, Emmen and Nyon), Sweden (Gothenburg, Linköping), Finland (Tampere), USA ( Titusville, Decatur), Aust ...

Sierra Nevada Corporation Sierra Nevada Corporation (also styled SNC) is an American aerospace, defense, electronics, engineering and manufacturing corporation that specializes in aircraft modification, integration and other space technologies. The corporation contracts ...

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and opera ...

Virgin Orbit Virgin Orbit was a company within the Virgin Group that provided launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 as a spin-off of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism venture to develop and market the LauncherOn ...

, Voyager Space Holdings, and York Space Systems. The companies that actually applied in August 2021 were: *

* Space Villages Inc. * Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation *

* Orbital Assembly Corporation (now Above: Space Development Corporation) * Hamon Industries * ThinkOrbital Inc. * DEHAS Limited * Maverick Space Systems Inc. *

Relativity Space Relativity Space Inc. is an American aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing company headquartered in Long Beach, California. Relativity Space is new product development, developing manufacturing technologies, launch vehicles, and rock ...

Team selection

Three teams were selected in December 2021 to continue work with agency grants (subject to approval by the United States Congress): *

, associated with its majority shareholder Voyager Space and

, was granted $160 million to develop its

Starlab Space Station ''Starlab'' is a LEO (low Earth orbit) commercial space station currently under development by Starlab Space, a joint venture between the U.S. company Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space and majority shareholder in Nanoracks) and Europe ...

project, *

, associated with

Sierra Space Sierra Space Corporation is a privately held aerospace and space technologies company headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, with additional facilities in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and a testing site at the Marshall Space Fl ...

(carve-out from

and

, was granted $130 million to develop its

Orbital Reef Orbital Reef is a low Earth orbit (LEO) space station under development. It is designed by Blue Origin and Sierra Space for Commercial astronaut, commercial space activities and space tourism uses. Blue Origin has referred to it as a "mixed-us ...

project, *

, associated with

Dynetics Dynetics is an American applied science and information technology company headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. Its primary customers are the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the United States Intelligence Community, and National Ae ...

, was granted $125.6 million to develop its unnamed station. Lockheed Martin withdrew from the Starlab project and was replaced by Airbus Defense and Space in 2023. On October 4, 2023, Northrop Grumman announced that it was joining the Starlab project and abandoning its own station project. The company plans in particular to develop an autonomous docking system for its Cygnus cargo ship, which will resupply the station. The company had already received $36.6 million of the $125.6 million granted by NASA. Also in October 2023, it was made public by CNBC that the partnership between Blue Origin and Sierra Space could end, with the two companies refocusing on their priority projects, respectively the Blue Moon and the Dream Chaser. The team had already received $24 million of the $130 million granted by NASA. In January 2024, an additional $100M in funding was added to the program.

References

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External links