NASA announced on Wednesday that it has awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to build an inflatable laboratory for the International Space Station. If successfully deployed and tested, the high-tech system could usher in a new generation of cheap, easily deployed space habitats.
"Today we're demonstrating progress on a technology that will advance important long-duration human spaceflight goals," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in a statement. "NASA's partnership with Bigelow opens a new chapter in our continuing work to bring the innovation of industry to space, heralding cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably."
The inflatable test facility, known as a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will launch aboard a SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the ISS in 2015. After its arrival, astronauts will install the module on the aft port of the station's Tranquility node, and then activate a pressurization system to expand the structure to its full size.
The BEAM will remain attached to the ISS for two years, during which station crew members and ground-based engineers will test the module's structural integrity and leak rate, and track environmental details like radiation and temperature changes. Once the test period is over, the BEAM will be jettisoned from the station and will burn up as it re-enter's Earth's atmosphere.
Inflatable space habitats offer a way of building stations that's much faster and cheaper than traditional "aluminum can" constructions: Since they're so small when they're deflated, they can be packed into a single cargo rocket and easily inflated once in orbit. The technology was initially developed at NASA in the 1960s, first as thick Mylar balloons and later as rubber bladders covered in Kevlar.
When Congress killed the program's funding in 2000, hotel magnate Robert Bigelow licensed the government patents and began modernizing them for commercial development. Now his company, Bigelow Aerospace, has a plan to make space stations that are cheap, efficient and available for monthly rental. For more about Bigelow's big bet on mankind's future in outer space, read my story about the man and his company, Cosmic Landlord.
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