NASA

NASA

NASA

NASA

NASA

NASA

Bigelow Aerospace

SpaceX

NASA

NASA

A half-year has passed since astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully inflated a new habitat, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM. On Tuesday, the space agency provided an update on the commercial module's performance one-quarter of the way through a two-year experiment: so far, so good.

"BEAM is the first of its kind, so we’re learning as we go, and this data will improve our structural and thermal models and analyses going forward," said Steve Munday, NASA's manager for the program. "Through the NASA sensor suites on board, our teams on the ground, and astronaut support on station, we’re gaining extremely valuable data about the performance of expandable structures and habitats in space."

The promise of inflatable modules is that they offer a larger volume of living and working space in orbit than a conventional module with a rigid structure. Inflatables can be folded inside the limited diameter of a rocket fairing, and when BEAM was expanded earlier this year, it nearly doubled in length and increased by 40 percent in diameter. But neither NASA nor anyone else was likely to trust astronauts to this experimental technology without a full-scale test. The BEAM experiment, for which NASA has a $17.8 million contract with Bigelow Aerospace, will finally allow the space agency to fully test a concept it has been interested in since the 1990s.

Among the primary concerns with expandables are their durability, ability to protect inhabitants from radiation, and thermal properties. According to six months of data collected by the Distributed Impact Detection System on board the module, it has sustained no evidence of debris impacts. Additionally, radiation effects appear to be similar to conditions inside the station's existing rigid modules. Finally, the module has done a reasonably good job of maintaining a steady temperature.

Bigelow intends to develop expandable modules commercially, including potentially as "space hotels." NASA, too, is interested in the technology for exploration purposes. Bigelow has proposed a much larger 330-cubic-meter expandable module as an option for the space agency as it seeks to develop a deep space habitat near the Moon in the 2020s. It is among six concepts that NASA has chosen to fund for further development.

To this end, the founder of the company, Robert T. Bigelow, has called upon incoming President Trump to provide more funding for NASA that will support innovative ideas and economic development in space. "Christmas arrived early this year! For the United States, and as I do believe will be eventually proven, for NASA, Christmas arrived on November the 8th," he said during a speech in Houston last week, celebrating Trump's win.

Noting that NASA only receives about 0.5 percent of the federal budget, Bigelow argued that the struggling space agency deserved a larger piece of the pie, as he sees the US economy growing under Trump. "With President Trump in the White House we have a good chance of achieving real, sustained, economic growth of about 3.5 percent annually," he said. "This is in contrast to the anemic growth rate we have had of 1.8 percent over the last eight years. With this increase, the United States can easily afford NASA’s 1 percent and even more."

Listing image by NASA