Axiom Space sues Vast over stolen NASA mission plans

Axiom Space has sued rival Vast Space under the False Claims Act, accusing the California company of submitting a NASA mission-planning document that incorporates Axiom's proprietary information — in places with Axiom's own name left in. Court filings in the case were unsealed by a November 4 order from US District Judge Charles Eskridge.

The dispute centres on NASA's Private Astronaut Missions program, launched in 2019, under which private companies organise crewed flights of up to four astronauts to the International Space Station. The missions are meant to give companies operational experience ahead of building their own commercial stations, with NASA retiring the ISS and running a competition for private successors intended to fly in the 2030s. Final proposals are due to the agency on December 14.

Axiom won the first four private astronaut missions — Axiom-1 launched in April 2022, Axiom-4 flew in the summer of 2025 — and in January NASA awarded it the fifth mission. Vast, based in Long Beach, got the sixth in February; Voyager Technologies took the seventh in April. Each contract requires a Mission Integration and Operations Management Plan, in effect the operational blueprint for the entire flight, and Axiom alleges that NASA's acceptance of Vast's version is a condition for a milestone payment.

According to the lawsuit, Vast submitted its mission-planning document before June 3, when NASA notified Axiom that its sensitive information had been improperly included in a competitor's deliverable. On page 11, Axiom alleges that Vast's submission in some places substituted "the PAM Provider" for Axiom's name — and that in others it left Axiom's name and company details in place.

An Axiom spokesperson framed the suit as defence of the partnership model: public-private ventures in human spaceflight depend on "candor, capability, original work, and integrity," and passing off another company's work "does not meet that standard." Vast called it competitive warfare by other means: NASA opened private astronaut missions to multiple providers because "competition drives innovation, delivers better value for taxpayers, and keeps America leading in space" — and "misusing litigation against a competitor works against all of that."

The market the two firms are fighting over may only support one or two winners, and the anti-establishment startups that pitched themselves against the legacy aerospace primes have now discovered the patent-and-pleading culture of the industry they set out to replace. The courtroom filings were unsealed a month before NASA picks its station partners.