NASA terminates 1st attempt to expand space station's inflatable room

U.S. space agency NASA called off its first attempt to expand its experimental inflatable room at the International Space Station on Thursday morning after several hours of efforts to introduce air into the module.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams led Thursday's operations to expand the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which was built by U.S. space company Bigelow Aerospace and launched to the orbiting lab in April in an effort to test and validate expandable habitat technology.

But mission controllers on the ground did not see the expansion they were expecting along with the increasing pressure inside the module, so operations were called off.

"BEAM had only expanded a few inches in both length and diameter at the time the operation ceased for the day," NASA said in a statement.

"Engineers are meeting to determine a forward course of action, with the possibility that another attempt could be made as early as Friday morning."

Inflatable habitats are designed to take up less room on a spacecraft, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded, according to NASA.

This first test of an inflatable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs and specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space, it added. Endit