The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was finally installed on the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday. The Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) was involved with the removal of the payload from trunk section of the recently arrived CRS-8 Dragon, prior to translating the new module to the Station\u2019s Node 3 port.<\/p>\n
BEAM:<\/p>\n
The expandable \u2013 sometimes tagged as inflatable \u2013 module rode to space during the latest SpaceX launch of its Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n
![\"2016-04-16-013812\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-013812-350x241.jpg\")
While a large amount of focus was placed on the historic first stage landing on the ASDS barge, Of Course I Still Love You, Dragon\u2019s safe ascent to orbit marked her return to Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) operations, following the loss of the previous Dragon mission.<\/p>\n
With a pressurized section full of supplies and equipment for the occupants of the orbital outpost, Dragon\u2019s unpressurized section, known as the Trunk, also hosted another highlight of the CRS-8 mission.<\/p>\n
Initially hiding out of the view of the prying eyes of the ISS cameras, BEAM was grabbed by the SSRMS over the early hours of Saturday ahead of its installation.<\/p>\n
![\"2016-04-16-014009\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-014009-350x269.jpg\")
Ahead of the grapple, the operation of \u201cletting go\u201d of the Dragon was conducted, ahead the SSRMS operations to retrieve BEAM.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, the arm\u2019s hold on the Dragon was a note of interest during the berthing of the spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cSSRMS Latching End Effector (LEE) tension. During Dragon capture there was an issue with the SSRMS LEE in which there was lower than expected LEE carriage rigidization tension force,\u201d noted L2 ISS notes.<\/p>\n
NASA mission patches (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n \u201cA re-rigidization command was successful, and the rest of the berthing activities proceeded nominally. Ground teams are investigating the cause of the initial low tension issue.\u201d<\/p>\n The arm was able to let go of Dragon, given she was firmly bolted to her port during the final stages of her arrival. In turn, the SSRMS moved into survey mode.<\/p>\n \u201cSSRMS Dragon Trunk Survey. SSRMS was relocated from Node 2, where it supported Dragon berthing, to the US Lab and performed a Dragon trunk and BEAM survey,\u201d added the notes. \u201cThis move also positions the SSRMS for upcoming Port FGB survey and BEAM extraction and installation.\u201d<\/p>\n Views of the extractions for ground controllers \u2013 who will be involved with the majority of the robotic operations were also checked out this week.<\/p>\n \u201cNode 3 Aft Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) installation,\u201d the noted continued. \u201cCrew successfully installed the CBCS in preparation for BEAM installation.\u201d<\/p>\n Trunk payload removal tasks are based on a complex series of procedures created by ground teams \u2013 as outlined in a Dragon\/ISS robotics ops document (L2).<\/p>\n Following survey testing during the first mission, the initial hardware that was removed from Dragon\u2019s Trunk came during the CRS-2\/SpX-2 mission.<\/p>\n This op was tasked with the removal of two Heat Rejection Subsystem Grapple Fixtures (HRSGFs) \u2013 which are essentially bars each featuring two Flight Releasable Grapple Fixtures (FRGFs).<\/p>\n That first major SSRMS payload removal during CRS-3 was the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) package, which comprises of four high-definition cameras, which is still streaming live video of Earth for online viewing. It was removed alongside the OPALS payload.<\/p>\n CRS-4\/SpX-4 also delivered a payload in the trunk section, with the ISS-RapidScat payload now attached to the Station\u2019s Columbus laboratory.<\/p>\n Operations to remove BEAM from Dragon\u2019s trunk began around 4:00 UTC on Saturday, via ground controller commands.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the years (we switched a lot to) ground controllers doing virtually everything (with the robotic operations), with just a couple of exceptions, such as the capture of the vehicles,\u201d noted ISS veteran and current Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams this week.<\/p>\n NASA TV began live coverage of the final leg of the four hour operation at 9:00 UTC on Saturday, as BEAM was installed on Node 3.<\/p>\n The process took until 9:36 UTC to complete, as the module was translated over into its new port, prior to undergoing first and second stage capture. The latter stage required some troubleshooting, but the installation was still completed around 15 minutes ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n At that point, crewmembers will ingress the module to install instrumentation and sensors to send data to the ground on its performance. The hatch will be closed for most of its berthed mission.<\/p>\n \u201cWell we\u2019re excited to add another \u2013 what is essentially \u2013 vehicle on to the Station,\u201d Expedition 47\u2019s Tim Kopra noted this week during media interviews from the ISS.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is another example of where the commercial industry has been innovative in their techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n It is expected to perform for at least two years of testing on the Station, providing a key shake out of the technology that is likely to play a major role in human deep space exploration.<\/p>\n \u201c(BEAM) will be a great way to test out the thermal characteristics of this new type of module, along with its radiation protection,\u201d added Kopra. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a neat thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Following its test period, the SSRMS will remove the module from the Station before releasing it Nadir (Earth-facing). The module will eventually re-enter around a year later.<\/p>\n A successful shakeout will also aid Bigelow\u2019s recently promoted aspirations for sending a BA-330 module to the ISS \u2013 although NASA is yet to rubber stamp the ideas presented at an event with its launch partner, United Launch Alliance (ULA).<\/p>\n When asked about the comments, Kopra admitted it would be a welcome addition to the Station.<\/p>\n \u201cI think any time we can bring up new modules to Space Station we\u2019re going to be excited about that. We have a big Station here but there\u2019s room to make it bigger.<\/p>\n \u201cSo if we can add additional modules to test out the future of space exploration \u2013 and the way humans are going to interact with modules \u2013 I think it\u2019s a great idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Images: NASA and renders from L2 artist Nathan Koga \u2013 The full gallery of Nathan\u2019s (SpaceX Dragon to MCT, SLS, Commercial Crew and more) L2 images can be *found here*)<\/p>\n (To join L2, click here: \/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was finally installed on the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday. The Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) was involved with the removal of the payload from trunk section of the recently arrived CRS-8 Dragon, prior to translating the new module to the Station\u2019s Node 3 port. BEAM: The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3108,2304,1395,233,8957],"class_list":["post-39088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-beam","tag-crs","tag-dragon","tag-iss","tag-ssrms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}See Also<\/h4>\n
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![\"\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Z563.jpg\")
Robotic operations with the Dragon have become the norm since they were first tested.<\/p>\n![\"Z5\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Z5.jpg\")
The next mission involved the first payload removal task between the SSRMS, the Dextre robot and Dragon\u2019s trunk during CRS-3\/SpX-3 \u2013 an operation that was repeated again during the CRS-5\/SpX-5 mission with the Cloud Aerosol Transport System (CATS) payload.<\/p>\n![\"2016-04-16-014501\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-014501-350x214.jpg\")
Ahead of BEAM installation, the petals on the Node 3 Aft CBM (Common Berthing Mechanism) hatch were opened on Friday.<\/p>\n![\"2016-04-16-104022\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-104022-350x227.jpg\")
\u201cRobotics will move it over with the arm and then we\u2019ll grab it with the latches and the CBM and do the initial bolting.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"2016-04-16-015616\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-015616-350x267.jpg\")
Following installation, expansion of the new habitat module won\u2019t occur until late May.<\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Screen-Shot-2016-04-09-at-13.14.01-350x246.png\")
BEAM will allow Bigelow and NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the inflatable habitat on ISS.<\/p>\n![\"2016-04-16-023324\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-04-16-023324-350x235.jpg\")
\u201cWe are exploring options for the location of the initial B330 including discussions with NASA on the possibility of attaching it to the International Space Station (ISS),\u201d said Robert Bigelow, founder and president of Bigelow Aerospace.<\/p>\n