SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The inflatable Bigelow Expandable Activity Module has been installed [space.com] on the International Space Station:

The International Space Station gained a brand new room on Saturday (April 16), but it will be another month before it grows large enough for the astronauts to enter. A first-of-its-type inflatable structure, the BEAM — or Bigelow Expandable Activity Module [space.com] — built by Bigelow Aerospace, was attached to the rear-facing port of the space station's Tranquility node. It is the first new addition to the orbiting outpost in five years. Launched inside the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule on April 8, the BEAM arrived at the space station two days later.

Early Saturday, flight controllers at NASA's Mission Control in Houston began sending commands to the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to extract the deflated, compressed BEAM from the Dragon and move it into position next to its attach point on the Tranquility module. [...] BEAM, which was compacted for its launch to a size of just 7 feet (2.1 meters) in diameter and 8 feet (2.4 m) in length, will be expanded to nearly five times its size [space.com] at the end of May. The space station's air supply will be used to inflate the new room to its fully-formed shape and then the BEAM's own air tanks will pressurize the module on or around May 26.

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