Denver just landed a front row seat in NASA’s next big act. Voyager Technologies, the hometown space and defense contractor, has been tapped to stage a private astronaut mission to the International Space Station that the company says could help pave the way for a future moon base.
The flight, dubbed VOYG-1, is slated to launch no earlier than 2028 and could carry a private crew to the orbiting lab for up to two weeks. For Denver, the order plants a local flag in NASA’s long-planned handoff of low Earth orbit work to commercial firms, with a city company now managing people in orbit instead of just hardware.
According to a NASA news release, VOYG-1 is NASA’s seventh private astronaut mission to the station and is expected to spend as many as 14 days aboard the ISS. Voyager will propose four crew members to NASA and its international partners, who will vet the candidates before they head into the standard training pipeline with NASA and the launch provider…