New room inflated at ISS in 2nd NASA bid
Print Edition
NASA slowly inflated a new experimental room at the International Space Station on Saturday, with better luck than the first try two days earlier.
Astronaut Jeffrey Williams repeatedly opened and closed a valve, allowing air to flow from the space station into the compartment, looking more and more like a giant marshmallow-y pod.
It was tedious work. Five hours into the operation, Williams had opened the valve 16 times and allowed a minute of air, all told, to rush in. Mission Control reported more than three feet of growth in the length of the structure, the first of its kind for space fliers. But there were still a couple more feet to go.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, barely expanded during Thursday’s inflation attempt. Experts believe the soft-sided compartment was packed up tight for so long before last month’s launch that the fabric layers had trouble unfolding.
Pressure inside the chamber was relieved on Friday to ease the friction among the multiple layers. Engineers hoped that would enable it to stretch to its full 13 feet in length and 10.5 feet in diameter — the volume equivalent to a small bedroom.
Bigelow Aerospace provided this first inflatable room ever built for astronauts. NASA paid US$17.8 million for the tech demo, which could lead to an even bigger inflatable room at the ISS.
Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, who runs the North Las Vegas aerospace firm, considers BEAM a test bed for future inflatable habitats for tourists orbiting Earth as well as astronauts on the moon or Mars. He plans to fly a pair of private inflatable stations in another few years.
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