Skip to footer

Space station astronauts to test inflatable habitat

NASA is scheduled to inflate the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module to the experimental habitat's performance in orbit.

|
Bigelow Aerospace
Artist's concept showing how the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which arrived at the International Space Station in April 2016, will look after its May 26 deployment.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will inflate the orbiting lab's brand-new experimental habitat module  this morning (May 26), and you can watch all of the action live.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams will lead the deployment of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), agency officials said. You can watch the BEAM module's inflation live here, courtesy of NASA TV. The webcast began at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) Thursday, and the inflation was expected to begin 40 minutes later. The entire inflation process is expected to take several hours, according to a NASA officials.

Expandable space habitats like BEAM, which was built by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, provide more usable internal volume per unit of launch mass than traditional rigid modules do, advocates say.

Bigelow has already launched two free-flying inflatable modules to orbit — Genesis I and Genesis II, in 2006 and 2007, respectively. But those missions were uncrewed, so the expansion of BEAM will mark the first time astronauts test out the technology in space. 

Researchers plan to investigate how BEAM performs in orbit — specifically, how it protects against space junk, solar radiation and temperature extremes, NASA officials said. If all goes according to plan, ISS crewmembers will enter BEAM several times a year over the next two years to acquire sensor data and see how the module is holding up.

Astronauts plan to enter BEAM for the first time next week on June 2, NASA officials said.

The 3,000-lb. (1,360 kilograms) BEAM arrived at the ISS on April 10 aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo capsule. 

In its compressed configuration, the module measures 7.1 feet long by 7.75 feet wide (2.16 by 2.36 meters). When fully expanded, BEAM will be 13.16 feet long and 10.5 feet wide (4.0 by 3.2 m) and will provide 565 cubic feet (16 cubic m) of habitable volume, NASA officials said.

Bigelow Aerospace is dreaming much bigger than BEAM: The company is developing an expandable module called the B330, which will feature 11,650 cubic feet (330 cubic m) of internal volume. Bigelow envisions launching B330s to serve as private space stations and the backbone of human outposts on the moon and Mars. 

There's more spaceflight action on tap Thursday as well. At 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT), SpaceX plans to launch the Thaicom-8 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, then attempt to land the first stage of the company's Falcon 9 rocket on a robotic ship in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Editor's Recommendations

Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Space station astronauts to test inflatable habitat
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0526/Space-station-astronauts-to-test-inflatable-habitat
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe