'BEAM' Aboard: Experimental Inflatable Room Attached to Space Station

Source: Space.com

'BEAM' Aboard: Experimental Inflatable Room Attached to Space Station

By Robert Pearlman, Space.com Contributor | April 16, 2016 08:31am ET

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 — 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.

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