Blow-Up Spacecraft to Expand International Space Station

Testing the idea and its practicality, NASA is all set to launch an inflatable component to ISS. As the astronauts pump air into this structure, it will expand from eight-feet bundle to a compartment as big as a garage for one car.

In the beginning, crew will only run tests on the model and not spend time inside of it. However, the observers say that its launch will be a big milestone for the space agency.

"It'll be the first time human beings will actually step inside this expandable habitat in space," says retired astronaut George Zamka, who has worked for Bigelow Aerospace, the company responsible for building the module. "It'll feel pretty beefy. ... There won't be this sense of it being like a balloon."

According to the engineers on the project, this structure will not be easy to puncture. The thick walls of the structure will be made of layers of fabric and Kevlar-like material. Space objects will not be able to penetrate its walls, Rajib Dasgupta from NASA said.

Robotic arm at the space station will fasten the structure to a docking station. Then the module will be inflated by pressing a button. Upon inflating, the module will expand between 7 feet and 13 feet in 45 minutes. An additional metal frame inside the module will help retain its shape, making the pod more "expandable" than "inflatable," Bigelow officials said.

This compartment will be launched into the orbit on April 8 in a SpaceX rocket. The Bigelow officials named the pod as Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM.

So far, two prototypes of these expandable pods have already been launched into space but none of them hosted humans. NASA is planning to tread carefully as they will have their astronauts spend no longer than three hours inside BEAM after every few months.

The space station "tends to get kind of cramped," Zamka says. "So any volume that's there that's not being used, the astronauts are probably going to be asking about it."