Nasa's Jeff Williams has become the first astronaut to 'step' inside the agency's recently inflated Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (Beam).
Williams, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, entered Beam to collect an air sample and begin downloading data from the module's sensors at 4:47am EDT.
Williams told flight controllers at Mission Control, Houston that Beam looked "pristine" and said it was cold inside, but that there was no evidence of any condensation on its inner surfaces.
Additional opportunities to deploy other sensors and equipment in Beam are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. The hatch to Beam will be closed after each entry.
Williams and Bigelow Aerospace teams worked with Mission Control Centre at Nasa's Johnson Space Center to expand Beam last month.
It was filled with air during more than seven hours of operations May 28. Williams opened the valve "25 times in short bursts as flight controllers carefully monitored the module’s internal pressure". The time between these bursts "allowed the module to stabilise and expand".
Beam launched on April 8 aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and was attached to the International Space Station’s Tranquility module a week later.
Nasa's first attempt to inflate the Beam failed, with the agency having to "stand down" on its first try. Nasa initially blamed the failure on "higher than expected pressures" inside the module, but later discovered it was down to layers of fabric inside the module sticking together. Beam was sent to the International Space Station in April on a SpaceX supply mission.
The habitat is designed to "greatly increase the amount of transport volume" for space missions, and give astronauts a larger – and more comfortable – habitat in which to live.
Alongside last month's broadcast, a team from Nasa took questions on a Reddit AMA, discussing radiation, thermal protection and more.
"Radiation protection is critical for astronauts," wrote the team.
"As a technology demonstrator, Beam will be fully instrumented with a variety of sensors by the Space Station crew after deployment and ingress, including thermal, debris impact, and radiation sensors," they wrote. "Data from the sensors inside Beam will be downloads by engineers on the ground throughout the two-year mission. This data will be invaluable for the viability and design of future expandable habitats."
The Nasa team added that it "remains to be seen" how well Beam's radiation protection would perform versus "standard metallic modules". It is hoped data gathered from Beam will pave the way for expandable structures on future space missions, including manned exploration of Mars.
The module was designed by Bigelow Aerospace, which has been working on the technology since 2000. In 2013 the company signed a $18 million (£12.4m) deal with Nasa to develop the Beam.
There are eight air tanks inside Beam, although the astronauts on board the ISS expanded it using manual valves on the habitat's bulkhead. Now inflated, Beam's internal tank system will be used to "automatically pressurise" the habitat.
The inflatable pod will remain attached to the ISS for two years. Once the experiment is over it will be "robotically jettisoned" back down to Earth.
"Beam will naturally drift away from the Space Station and re-enter the earth's atmosphere about a year later. It will pose an extremely low risk to people on the ground – most of Beam is made of fabric that will burn up quickly during re-entry. Even in a worst case scenario, there is an extremely low risk of falling near anyone according to conservative computer model analysis."
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."
During the AMA, the team said the Beam could also be used for "deep space habitats like on the surface of Mars" or as "transit habitats attached to Orion on our way to deep space".
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
