NASA Installing Attachable Inflatable Space Habitat To ISS

NASA will add an extra room to the International Space Station (ISS) over this weekend, according to a recent report. The U.S. space agency will install the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) to the space station on Saturday. BEAM is an inflatable space habitat that will stay attached to the Tranquility module of ISS for the next two years. After being connected and inflated, BEAM will provide an area of 565 cubic feet for astronauts to inhabit.

The recent SpaceX launch saw the delivery of BEAM to the ISS. The main goal of the unit will be to test the success of expandable habitat technologies in space. Consequently, the resulting information will help Bigelow Aerospace, BEAM's manufacturer, to develop sturdier expandable space habitats in the near future. One of Bigelow's ultimate aims is to build space hotels that not only come in handy for scientists but also lead to space tourism eventually.

"Our hope is that NASA would be the primary customer for that structure and we'd be given permission [to commercialize it]," said Robert Bigelow, CEO Bigelow Aerospace. "Essentially we'd be timesharing." The company also announced that it wants to launch expandable habitats with rockets from the United Launch Alliance by 2020.

There will be a live coverage of BEAM's installation process, which is expected to take around four hours on Saturday. However, NASA will broadcast only a part of the process.  The module won't be inflated until the end of May. After inflation, BEAM will become 13 feet long and 10 feet in diameter, reaching its maximum size.

One of the main advantages of inflatable space habitats is their flexibility of staying compact during launch and then expanding after the installation process. However, it is not clear how the habitats will hold up during a long period spent in microgravity. To aid this research, BEAM contains a suite of sensors that will collect data about the habitat's tenure at the station. Astronauts aboard the ISS will enter the BEAM three or four times a year to accumulate the information for Bigelow and NASA. After BEAM has successfully completed its term with ISS, it will be detached from the space station and consequently, the earth's atmosphere will burn it up.