When you are trying to renovate your home, it isn’t too difficult if you want to make one room bigger, or if you have a piece of landed property, you could potentially make your home bigger by expanding it. Over in space, it isn’t as straightforward and sending up expansions can be troublesome due to the weight and bulk of such expansions, not to mention expensive.However it seems that engineers are now one step closer to making expansions in space more achievable, thanks to the recent successful deployment of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an expandable habitat that is the first of its kind which could mark how astronauts could live in deep-space missions, or it could potentially be used for space tourist trips in the future.
What makes BEAM different from typical expansion modules is the fact that it is lighter, which means it is easier to fit onto rockets, and it also makes it cheaper. It is launched into space completely compressed, but it is expected to be decompressed and expanded where it will grow up to four and a half times its size and will provide 565-cubic feet of habitable space.
Astronauts on the International Space Station will put BEAM to the test over the course of the next two years where they will test its performance and capability as an expandable habitat. According to NASA’s post on its Tumblr page, “When we’re traveling to Mars or beyond, astronauts need habitats that are both durable and easy to transport and to set up. That’s where expandable technology comes in. BEAM is one of the first steps to test expandable structures as a viable alternative to traditional space habitats.”