Tag: Bigelow Aerospace

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Bigelow tests earthbound space station mockup

Bigelow Aerospace team
The team for the NASA-Bigelow Aerospace habitat test lines up in front of the Bigelow Mars Transporter Testing Unit at the company’s Nevada headquarters. (Bigelow Aerospace Photo)

Bigelow Aerospace opened up its ground-based prototype for a space station module — or perhaps even a Mars transport habitat — for inspection today at its headquarters in North Las Vegas.

The open house centered on the Mars Transporter Testing Unit, an all-steel mockup of the company’s expandable, fabric-covered B330 space module. For two weeks, a NASA-Bigelow team will be testing the suitability of the B330 concept for crewed deep-space missions.

Bigelow’s prototype is one of six ground-based demonstration projects funded as part of NASA’s NextSTEP-2 program. The other companies building full-sized NextSTEP-2 prototypes for space habitats include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Nanoracks.

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Bigelow aims to sell space station rides for $52M

Kate Rubins in Bigelow's BEAM
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins conducts tests and replaces parts inside the International Space Station’s Bigelow Expandable Activity Module in 2016. (NASA Photo)

Just days after NASA laid out its ground rules for commercial travel to the International Space Station, Nevada-based Bigelow Space Operations says it’s targeting a fare of roughly $52 million a seat for rides that will make use of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule.

Bigelow Space Operations is the service subsidiary of Bigelow Aerospace, the space venture founded by Nevada real-estate development magnate Robert Bigelow. Three years ago, Bigelow Aerospace had one of its expandable modules attached to the space station for testing, and it’s still being used.

Following up on NASA’s June 7 announcement, Bigelow said his company has put down substantial deposits and reservation fees for up to four SpaceX launches to the space station. Each launch would be capable of sending up to four people into orbit for a stay of up to one or two months, in accordance with the space agency’s ground rules.

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Bigelow sets up new company for space stations

Bigelow space complex
An artist’s conception shows three Bigelow Aerospace B330 modules linked together to create a space station being serviced by SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Such a configuration would provide as much pressurized volume as the International Space Station. (Bigelow Aerospace Illustration)

Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace has had space modules in orbit for more than a decade, but now billionaire founder Robert Bigelow is starting a new push to operate commercial space stations.

To that end, he has set up a separate company called Bigelow Space Operations, or BSO, with the aim of having Bigelow’s expandable B330 modules sent into orbit. Two of the 330-cubic-meter (12,000-cubic-foot) habitats are due to be ready for launch by as early as 2021.

The timing for deployment will depend on the outcome of Bigelow’s negotiations with potential launch providers, and the findings of a market study to be conducted by BSO this year.

“We intend to spend millions of dollars this year in drilling down, hopefully, to a conclusion one way or the other as to what the global market is going to look like, and we expect to finish this investigation by the end of this year,” Bigelow told reporters today during a teleconference.

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Bigelow and ULA plan outpost in lunar orbit

Lunar depot
An artist’s conception shows a Bigelow B330 expandable module in lunar orbit, with United Launch Alliance’s ACES propulsion stage attached. (Bigelow Aerospace Illustration)

NASA is shifting its attention to the moon, and so are Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance: Today the two companies said they’d work together to put an outpost in orbit around the moon by as soon as 2022.

The plan builds on the companies’ earlier partnership to send one of Bigelow’s B330 expandable space modules into Earth orbit.

Now the idea is to launch a B330 into low Earth orbit on ULA’s Vulcan launch vehicle, get it outfitted as a platform for lunar-orbit operations and send up 70 tons of propellant on two Vulcans. Then ULA’s Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage would fuel up, attach itself to the B330 and push onward to the moon.

Billionaire Robert Bigelow, president of Bigelow Aerospace, said the lunar station could play a role in NASA’s plans to establish a moon base and move on to Mars.

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Space ventures call for boosting FAA’s budget

Image: Blue Origin launch
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifts off for a test in January 2016. (Credit: Blue Origin)

When senators asked executives from Blue Origin and other commercial space ventures what they could do to help them at a Senate hearing today, they received an unusual reply: Give more money to the regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration.

“”It may be rare for companies to be pushing for more funding for their regulators, but we really think this is a case where it could be a good investment for the country,” Virgin Galactic CEO George T. Whitesides said during a Senate space subcommittee hearing.

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, also known as AST, is responsible for regulating and encouraging development of private-sector launch companies such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

AST’s budget for the current fiscal year is just a little less than $20 million, or just a little more than 0.1 percent of the FAA’s total budget of $15.9 billion.

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Space module puffs up like a bag of popcorn

Image: BEAM
A camera on the International Space Station shows the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, after inflation. (Credit: NASA TV)

It took almost eight hours, but NASA accomplished the first expansion of a pop-up module at the International Space Station today, by inflating the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM.

BEAM was built for NASA by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace under the terms of a $17.8 million contract. It was sent up to the station last month in the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule. In its folded-up form, the cylinder-shaped module measures only 7 feet long, but when it’s pressurized with air, it can grow to twice its size.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams started the job of filling BEAM with air on Thursday, but it was tough going: The module grew by only a few inches before NASA had to call off the operation for the day.

Mission managers surmised that the reinforced fabric on BEAM’s exterior had gotten stiff during prolonged storage. That led to “increased friction between the various layers … which is possibly causing this whole expansion process to just unfold a little bit slower than all of the initial predictions,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot said.

NASA let the fabric relax on Friday. Today, the pace was just as slow as it was two days earlier, but steadier.

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Expandable space module barely expands

Image: BEAM module
The Bigelow Expandable Space Module, or BEAM, is designed to expand to twice its folded-up length, but during an initial attempt, it stretched out just a few inches. (Credit: NASA TV)

Update: NASA will make its second attempt to inflate the Bigelow Expandable Space Module starting at around 6 a.m. PT May 28. More details below. 

A multimillion-dollar pop-up room that NASA sees as the future of space habitats expanded just a few inches before the experiment fizzled at the International Space Station on May 26. The space agency said it would try again to deploy the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM.

BEAM was developed by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace under the terms of a $17.8 million contract with NASA, and sent to the station last month in the unpressurized “trunk” of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.

The technology takes advantage of a concept that NASA developed in the 1990s. Bigelow Aerospace, founded by real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow, licensed the concept and tested it with two free-flying modules that have been launched into orbit over the past decade.

After BEAM’s arrival at the space station, astronauts used the station’s robotic arm to hook up the folded-up module to a port on the Tranquility mode. On May 26, the crew tried releasing air into the module to expand it from about 7 feet to 13 feet in length. The module pushed out about 5 inches, but then it stopped.

After a couple of hours of effort, NASA called off the attempt.

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Supersized space module set for 2020 launch

B330 module
An artist’s conception shows the B330 space module in Earth orbit. (Credit: Bigelow Aerospace)

DENVER – Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance have announced a plan to launch Bigelow’s B330 expandable space module aboard an Atlas 5 rocket in 2020, to serve as a destination for commercial operations in orbit.

Today’s announcement at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., came just one day after a much smaller test module – the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM – arrived at the International Space Station. Over the next two years, NASA will test the BEAM to learn how well the stretched-out room stands up to the harsh space environment.

Bigelow Aerospace’s founder, real-estate billionaire Robert Bigelow, said the B330 may end up docked to the station as well. The module would add 330 cubic meters to the station’s habitable volume, which is 20 times the volume of the BEAM when fully expanded. The B330 would boost the station’s current pressurized volume by 30 percent.

Put another way, the B330 is the equivalent of a two-bedroom apartment, as opposed to the bedroom-sized BEAM. Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, quipped that the B330 will be “bigger than my first apartment.”

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SpaceX to deliver pop-up room to space station

Image: BEAM module
An artist’s conception shows the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module attached to the International Space Station. (Credit: Bigelow Aerospace)

For the first time, SpaceX is due to launch an entire room to the International Space Station – a room that can go into orbit folded up, and then be expanded like an accordion once it’s hooked up to the station.

The 3,100-pound Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is the primary payload for a cargo resupply mission. BEAM will be packed in the “trunk” of SpaceX’s uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule when it’s lofted into space by a Falcon 9 rocket.

Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is set for 4:43 p.m. ET (1:43 p.m. PT) April 8. Forecaster Kathy Winters said there’s a 90 percent chance of acceptable weather. “It’ll be a great day to launch a rocket,” she told reporters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

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