A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship delivered the first inflatable room for astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. SpaceX’s Dragon will join three cargo carriers and two crew capsules already parked there.
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In a milestone moment for private space company SpaceX, the reusable mainstage booster of a Falcon 9 rocket successfully touched down autonomously on a landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean, some 185 miles off the coast of Cape Canaveral. It should swell to the size of a small bedroom once filled with air.
The capsule also carries an inflatable room called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM for short. Nasa wants to see how the experimental chamber functions, so the hatch will stay sealed except when astronauts enter a few times a year to collect measurements and change sensors.
SpaceX’s Dragon is expected to meet the Orbital ATK-made Cygnus spacecraft, which launched March 22 aboard the United Launch Alliance-built Atlas V rocket, for the first time at the orbiting laboratory.
There are now six spacecraft docked at the ISS – the most since 2011.
Roughly half the upcoming missions will leave the Falcon 9’s booster with too little reserve fuel to fly all the way back to the launch site for a return landing, so the ability to land at sea is essential, Musk said.
NASA representative George Diller affirmed that the rocket had effectively landed minutes after Falcon 9 pushed the unmanned Dragon load art to circle, which was conveying supplies for space explorers at the International Space Station. “There are smiles all around here”, NASA’s Mission Control replied.
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Inflatable habitats are created to take up less room on a rocket, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded, NASA said, noting that this test allows investigators to gauge how well the expandable habitat protects itself against solar radiation, space debris and contamination. Science research, crucial hardware and supplies are being delivered via the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
