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The US aerospace company Sierra Nevada has unveiled a large-scale prototype for a new inflatable habitat that can accommodate future astronauts living and working in far-flung spaces.
What is it? The module, which was unveiled Wednesday at Johnson Space Center in Houston, is 26 meters (8 meters) in diameter and has an internal volume of about 10,000 cubic feet. In the three-storey design, the first floor is for storing food and materials; the second floor houses the culture module and laboratory instruments for experiments, and the third floor is for sleep and meals.
Why build it? The new model represents only a third of the volume of the International Space Station, but the ISS was built from several pieces that have been launched and assembled separately over the years. An inflatable module can be compressed and stored in a single launch load, and then deployed and expanded in just a few days. The Sierra Nevada module is composed of vectron, the same lightweight material that is used to make bullet-proof vests and can shrink to just under 10 feet, easily adapting to the payload fairing of most heavy rockets.
And after? In 2016, NASA chose Sierra Nevada as one of six aerospace companies build and test small habitats for his Moon door project, a space station that would serve as a starting point for future missions beyond the moon. Northrup Grumman was given a contract to actually build its module, so we do not know exactly what Sierra Nevada will do with its module now.
This could work as an ISS attachment (like Bigelow Aerospace BEAM expandable module). Alternatively, it could be used in a new station in low Earth orbit, or could still play a role in traveling on the Moon or on Mars.
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