NASA called off an attempt to inflate an experimental habitat attached to the International Space Station after the fabric module failed to expand as planned on Thursday.
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What’s riding on a successful inflation? A two-year research agreement and a potentially viable technology to aid deep-space exploration. If NASA approves it, the BEAM could be used for science experiments at that time. At first everything looked good.
When fully expanded, the compartment should exceed 13 feet in length and 10 1/2 feet in diameter.
For now, the source of the problem remains a mystery, but NASA engineers have been parsing the problem and hope to have solution shortly.
Responding to media, an official spokesperson of Bigelow Aerospace revealed that the company had completed hypervelocity impact testing on Earth by pelting projectiles, which fly at a speed of 7 kilometers per second.
After a lengthy pause and another try, NASA called the whole thing off and engineers huddled at Johnson Space Center in Houston to try to figure out why BEAM hadn’t expanded properly.
According to Nasa, expandable habitats require “less payload volume on a rocket than traditional rigid structures”, and also provide a “varying degree of protection from solar and cosmic radiation, space debris, atomic oxygen, ultraviolet radiation and other elements in space”.
The Bigelow Expandable Space Module, or BEAM, is created to expand to twice its folded-up length, but during an initial attempt, it stretched out just a few inches.
“When we’re traveling to Mars or beyond, astronauts need habitats that are both durable and easy to transport and to set up”, NASA wrote in a Tumblr post. “This partnership agreement for the use of expandable habitats represents a step forward in cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably, and heralds important progress in US commercial space innovation”. “Existing Space Station metallic modules are designed for the full lifetime of the Space Station through 2024”.
Astronaut Jeff Williams spent about three hours carefully bleeding air into BEAM, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module.
NASA is releasing air into an inflatable room delivered last month by SpaceX. The inflatable module can change the aerospace industry because it can easily be transported due to its lighter weight. After that, ground controllers told ISS astronaut Jess Williams to start transferring air from the station to the module, in order to slowly inflate it, NPR reports.
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“Thanks for all your patience today, and we’ll hope for better luck tomorrow”, Mission Control radioed, the AP reported.
