The (Near) Future of Commercialized Space Stations
The next chapter in orbital human spaceflight will be on next generation commercial space stations. Private companies like Axiom are planning on replacing the ISS with their own designed and manufactured space stations. Axiom’s plan is to send their own station modules into low earth orbit and attach them to the ISS for the time being and quickly accumulate their modules to form the Axiom Station while being hosted by the ISS. At the time of the ISS’s retirement, the Axiom Station is to disembark and exist on it’s own to provide a variety of services, some that the ISS lacked.