{"id":710514,"date":"2026-06-02T14:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710514\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:24:21","slug":"french-astronauts-set-for-2027-voyages-to-iss-and-first-commercial-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710514\/","title":{"rendered":"French astronauts set for 2027 voyages to ISS and first commercial space station"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two French astronauts are to blast into space next year, one of whom will stay on board the world’s first commercial space station, under a new deal sealed between France<\/a> and the US company Vast.<\/p>\n

“This confirms France’s space ambitions,” President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> said on X late Monday after announcing the deal on the sidelines of a Paris<\/a> conference.<\/p>\n

Under the deal, Thomas Pesquet<\/a> and Arnaud Prost will embark on separate missions that will last around two weeks each, the California-based Vast said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Read moreChinese astronaut to spend a full year in orbit as Beijing ramps up Moon race<\/a><\/p>\n

Prost’s first trip to space is planned to be to the Haven-1 commercial space station, which Vast has been developing.<\/p>\n

After years of delays, the company insists the station is scheduled to finally be deployed next year.<\/p>\n

Prost would serve as test engineer on the first crewed mission to the station.<\/p>\n

“This astronaut mission to a private space station is a world-first,” France’s space agency CNES said.<\/p>\n

Read moreFrance’s Sophie Adenot and crew arrive at International Space Station<\/a><\/p>\n

Pesquet will meanwhile launch on a private Vast mission to the International Space Station<\/a>, which will mark his third stay on the orbital laboratory.<\/p>\n

Pesquet will be the commander of the mission, which is not scheduled to launch before mid-2027.<\/p>\n

Both missions will launch on the Falcon 9 rockets of billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>‘s SpaceX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the ISS mission will need to be approved by a panel of the space station’s partners, which include NASA<\/a>, the European Space Agency<\/a>, Russia<\/a>‘s Roscosmos, Japan<\/a>‘s JAXA and the Canadian Space Agency.<\/p>\n

If the mission is approved, it would be “a major first: no non-American has ever commanded a US capsule”, the CNES said.<\/p>\n

Vast was founded in 2021 by cryptocurrency<\/a> billionaire Jed McCaleb with the aim of launching the first commercial space station with Haven-1.<\/p>\n

The company aspires to eventually replace the ISS with Haven-2, a larger version of the first model.<\/p>\n

After being continuously inhabited for more than a quarter of a century, the ISS mission is scheduled to end in 2030.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two French astronauts are to blast into space next year, one of whom will stay on board the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[345411,64,63,345410,345412,128,53807,345409],"class_list":["post-710514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-arnaud-prost","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-commercial-space-station","tag-iss-mission","tag-science","tag-space-station","tag-thomas-pesquet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}