PITCH This time, it’s good. The second attempt of NASA deploy an experimental inflatable module, which docked with the International Space Station (ISS), seemed to be going smoothly Saturday 28 May, after a failed first attempt Thursday.
after three quarters of an hour and after blowing air twice, the module known as “Bigelow Expandable Activity Module” or Beam seemed to unfold as planned, according to the comments of the Nasa and the images broadcast live from the international Space station.
“Everything is going smoothly,” said a spokesman for NASA.
Thursday , teams of NASA decided to prematurely end the first attempt to deploy after meeting a stronger than expected resistance. Rather than forcing things, engineers at the space agency preferred to postpone the operation.
Beam is part of NASA experiments to test inflatable habitats, which are lighter and less bulky and could one day be used on Mars or the Moon. Bigelow Aerospace of his side that built the module under a contract of $ 17.8 million with NASA, said in a statement Thursday that “the Beam had been folded for much longer than initially expected,” either fifteen months instead of five months.
a space of 16 cubic meters
This may have affected the flexibility of the material Kevlar, an extremely Resisters thermoplastic, which forms the casing module explains the firm. Beam, a mass of 1.4 tons, measuring four meters long and 3.23 meters in diameter when fully inflated with breathable air. Its volume is thus multiplied by 4.5 which provides a space of 16 cubic meters, the equivalent of a small room.
The test of this unit docked to the ISS will allow scientists and engineers to evaluate its performance and especially whether it can provide protection against solar and cosmic radiation and micrometeorites against space debris and other more extreme temperatures.
the astronauts currently in Space Station should normally enter the unit once deployed and come back several times a year during the period of two years provided for this experiment. They will report the data and measurements collected by sensors located inside the BEAM and also regularly evaluate the module status
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