Max Space, a U.S-headquartered space infrastructure company developing next-generation expandable habitats, announced it has been selected for NASA funding through the agency’s Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity (ACO) program. The work will accelerate testing of Max Space’s expandable habitat technology for future human lunar surface applications. The award comes as NASA and the United States shift from returning astronauts to the Moon to building the infrastructure required to stay there. 

Artemis and NASA’s Moon to Mars architecture point toward a future defined by sustained lunar operations, surface logistics, power, mobility, science and habitation. In that future, pressurized volume is not a luxury. It is the place where astronauts live, work, recover, conduct science, manage operations and build the first enduring foothold beyond Earth.

“America’s next great space milestone will not be a footprint. It will be permanence,” said Saleem Miyan, Co-founder and CEO of Max Space. “NASA’s lunar strategy makes clear that the Moon is becoming an infrastructure mission. Habitats are central to that mission, and this ACO award advances one of the hardest and most important capabilities required: large, safe, affordable volume that can launch compact and expand where it is needed.”

Max Space was created to solve a fundamental constraint in human exploration: conventional rigid structures do not scale efficiently to the volume astronauts need for long-duration life and work. The company’s expandable architecture is designed to launch compact, reduce mass and packaging burden and deploy into large pressurized environments on orbit, on the Moon and eventually on Mars. For lunar surface operations, that capability can support crew living areas, laboratories, medical and logistics zones, mission operations and other critical infrastructure needed to move from short-duration missions to a permanent American presence near the lunar South Pole.

“Max Space was built for this moment,” Miyan said. “Our goal is direct and urgent: place a U.S. flag-bearing expandable habitat on the Moon in 2028, generate real data from the lunar surface, and give NASA a scalable infrastructure asset that helps turn lunar permanence from strategy into hardware.”

The planned 2028 lunar habitat mission is intended to demonstrate expandable habitat performance in the environment that matters most: the Moon itself. The mission is expected to provide data on deployment, structural behavior, thermal performance, lunar night survival, landing-site conditions and the operational realities of building useful pressurized infrastructure on the lunar surface, including specific NASA payloads, which will be announced shortly.

“The country does not need another abstract conversation about living on the Moon,” Miyan added. “It needs tested systems, real flight data and companies willing to move at the speed of the national mission. Max Space is proud to be aligned with NASA at this pivotal moment and committed to delivering the habitat capability that permanent lunar presence demands.”

Expandable habitats are also foundational to the broader space economy. The same architecture that supports lunar crews, science, logistics and mission operations can support commercial space stations, cislunar platforms, orbital research facilities, sovereign astronaut missions and Mars-transit habitation.

Click here to learn more about Max Space's Expandable Habitat Technology