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The space habitats humans have used thus far take, for the most part, gone into orbit fully formed. The Bigelow Expandable Activeness Module (Axle) is an experimental inflatable habitat constructed past Bigelow Aerospace that made its mode to the ISS on the SpaceX resupply mission in April (when SpaceX also nailed its first drone ship landing). BEAM was attached to the Quiet node after information technology arrived, and NASA was supposed to inflate information technology today, but it had to abort the procedure.

BEAM is intended to act every bit a exam of the reliability and efficiency of inflatable habitats in space. It took upward a relatively small amount of space on the SpaceX Dragon sheathing equally a 7×8-foot cylinder. When expanded it will be xiii-feet long, adding 565 cubic feet of space to the International Infinite Station. That's more than the entire cargo volume of the Dragon. Because this is the starting time time annihilation of this scale has been attempted, at that place were bound to exist some snags. Although, just not working is probably more of a snag than NASA was hoping for.

The program was to slowly pressurize the unexpanded BEAM compartment, allowing the structure to expand to its total size. Because this is the first fourth dimension something of this size has been inflated on the ISS, NASA wanted to take it irksome and monitor how the expansion happened. The engineers weren't even sure exactly how the construction would comport when pressurized, but they came up with several theories. Maybe it would expand across then out, or peradventure the other style around? Well, we don't know even so because NASA couldn't go information technology to aggrandize at all.

What it was supposed to look like.

What it was supposed to look like.

Astronaut Jeff Williams began letting air into Axle using a minor valve in one to four second bursts as instructed by footing control. The module did announced to be expanding as expected at first — information technology extended about v inches, then stopped. Subsequently adding more than air in hopes of jostling the module loose, NASA had to call off the operation. The agency said in a statement that it's working closely with Bigelow Aerospace to determine what's causing the module to hang and what tin exist done about it.

A press briefing originally scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed until NASA tin figure out what to make of the stuck BEAM. Luckily, the BEAM was not being deployed with any specific use in mind other than testing expandable habitats. This is but role of the learning process.