Inside NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East, a relatively small aerospace outfit is quietly working on a very big job. Vivace International, a compact contractor tucked into the sprawling complex, is building a key cone section of Starlab, the commercial space station slated to follow the International Space Station. Company leaders say that section should be wrapped up by June 2026, a milestone that keeps the ambitious program moving on a tight timeline. The work comes on the heels of a Feb. 18, 2026, purchase of Vivace by an affiliate of private equity firm Cerberus.
According to NOLA.com, Vivace, founded in 2006 and relocated to Michoud in 2012, has carved out a niche building flight hardware such as high-pressure titanium propellant tanks and now employs roughly 70 people locally. During a Feb. 11 factory tour, Vivace operations chief Luke Wright told reporters the project "will accelerate the country's ability to beat adversaries to the moon and bolster defense posture," the outlet reported, making clear this is not just another fabrication contract.
Starlab milestone brings launch hardware to New Orleans
Starlab Space announced in September 2025 that Vivace would manufacture the station’s primary structure and called the component one of the largest single spaceflight structures ever developed. NASA has been backing commercial station development and says Starlab is being designed as a continuously crewed destination for four astronauts, according to NASA. For a New Orleans shop that once focused on tanks and tooling, that is a serious jump in orbital responsibility.
New ownership and local production scale
S&P Global Market Intelligence reports that an affiliate of Cerberus completed its full acquisition of Vivace on Feb. 18, 2026, following an earlier growth investment made in 2024. Vivace’s own website lists more than 150,000 square feet of manufacturing and test space at its Michoud site and highlights capabilities in flight hardware, tooling and propulsion tanks, a setup that is a bit beyond a typical neighborhood workshop. That mix of new capital and steady Starlab work could help ramp up production of station components on the New Orleans floor without missing the tight schedule.
Why Michoud matters
The Michoud Assembly Facility functions as a massive, multi-tenant manufacturing campus, with the large tooling, assembly halls and test infrastructure required for truly enormous spaceflight hardware, local industry groups note. That capacity, along with the site’s long history supporting U.S. human spaceflight programs, is a major reason companies like Vivace put their heavy fabrication inside the complex, according to IFMA New Orleans.
For New Orleans, the Starlab contract and the Cerberus deal highlight a shift toward more commercial and defense-adjacent manufacturing at Michoud as NASA pivots to commercial low-Earth-orbit destinations ahead of the planned retirement of the ISS around 2030, per NASA. Vivace’s cone section is one piece of that broader transition, but a visible one, and company officials say they intend to keep pressing toward those mid-2026 completions while the larger Starlab program marches toward full assembly and testing.
