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Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Balerion Space Ventures has led a $500 million funding round for Vast, a company which develops private space stations. The company says its strategic roadmap includes low-earth orbit space stations, future human habitats on the Moon and Mars, as well as crewed systems that will support the expansion of the commercial space economy.
The financing round was led by Balerion Space Ventures with participation from IQT, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mitsui & Co., Ltd, MUFG, Nikon Corporation (Nikon), Stellar Ventures, Space Capital, and Earthrise Ventures. Jed McCaleb, founder and first investor, also participated in the round. As part of the transaction, Balerion Advisor A.C. Charania, former Chief Technologist for NASA, will join the Vast board.
Phil Scully, a partner at Balerion Space Ventures tells Opalesque that Vast has the potential to help build a human foothold in space that isn't just limited to crewed missions for NASA or other international space agencies.
"The benefit to something like a private space station is that it will provide a base of operations after the ISS mission has completed," he said in an interview. "Habitat is the bottleneck for everything we are trying to do in space. So to the extent that companies like Vast can start creating space stations, those stations will support the process of building out the space economy."
Vast has a goal to support continuous crew operations through its Haven s...................... To view our full article Click here
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