NASA to try again to deploy space station's inflatable room Saturday

U.S. space agency NASA said on Friday it will make a second attempt to expand the experimental inflatable room at the International Space Station on Saturday.

NASA halted an effort to deploy the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) on Thursday because the module failed to fully expand as planned.

NASA officials said at a conference call with reporters that it's likely that friction forces between BEAM's fabric layers had prevented the module from swelling.

"The primary force that we believe that we are working against is friction forces between the fabrics," said Jason Crusan, director of NASA's advanced exploration systems division.

"Those fabric friction forces -- soft goods friction forces -- are most likely the contributing factor."

Bigelow Aerospace, which built BEAM under a NASA contract, said in a statement that BEAM has undergone "a tremendous squeeze" for over 15 months, which is 10 months longer than planned.

"Therefore, there is a potential for the behavior of the materials that make up the outside of the spacecraft to act differently than expected," it said, expressing confidence that there is no question that the module is capable of deployment.

BEAM was launched to the orbiting lab last month in an effort to test and validate expandable habitat technology. Endit