Today , NASA Astronaut Jeff William enter theBigelow Expandable Activity Module ( BEAM ) , allowing him to collect the first data from thenew habitat’sinterior one week after it was inflated .
At 08:47am UTC ( 4:47am EDT ) , Williams , along with Russian astronaut Oleg Skripochka , open BEAM ’s hatching and floated inside to take samples of the air and observe the conditions inside . The inflatable home ground , the first such habitat ever instal on the International Space Station ( ISS ) , was describe as insensate , but there was no evidence of condensation on any surface – an denotation that everything is wreak well .
Williams and Skripochka have also started downloading data from BEAM ’s sensing element , which let in important informaion about the mental faculty ’s expansion . This will hopefully help the dry land team know on the dot what materialize during thefailed first elaboration endeavour .
The successful elaboration was complete on Saturday , May 28 , and it accept more than seven 60 minutes of operations . The NASA and Bigelow Aerospace background team worked with Williams to add a regular injection of air into the module , with the cosmonaut cautiously open up the valve 25 clip to add airwave . The bursts had to be very curt to make certain BEAM ’s expansion was stable and without risk . The valve was heart-to-heart in total for only 2 minutes and 27 seconds .
On Tuesday and Wednesday , Williams will re - enter the habitat to place newfangled sensors . Their job will be to monitor how BEAM make out in space for the next two years ; how it reacts to radiation sickness , micrometeor , and orbital debris , and how it deals with the temperature excursion outside the ISS – which travel from 121 ° coulomb ( 250 ° F ) on the Sun - facing side to -157 ° C ( -250 ° F ) when it ’s in the shadow of Earth .
The hatch to the faculty will always be close after each surgical operation . BEAM , which is 4 time ( 13 animal foot ) in length and 3.22 meters ( 10.5 base ) in diameter , will be in operation until 2018 , when it will be detached from the ISS and jettisoned into Earth ’s atm .
