A British company, Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE), announced Jan. Inflatable “entertainment” module proposed for ISSīEAM, though, may not be the only inflatable module on the ISS in the future. It notably was not among the “interested parties” that participated in meetings last year for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program to support development of commercial space stations, and was not a part of any of the three teams that received NASA awards in December. The company has not made any public comments about its future since then. In March 2020, Bigelow Aerospace laid off its entire workforce, citing restrictions imposed by the Nevada state government in the early weeks of the pandemic that closed nonessential businesses. NASA selected Axiom Space in January 2020 to develop a commercial module to be installed on the station as soon as 2024.
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It had been working on a much larger module called B330 because it had a volume of 330 cubic meters when fully expanded.īigelow, though, declined to bid on a NASA competition to install a commercial module on the ISS, saying the funding offered by the agency was insufficient to close its business case. In addition to BEAM, the company launched two prototype inflatable modules, Genesis 1 and 2, in 20, respectively.
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NASA spokesperson Leah Cheshier said at the time that the transfer of ownership was one of the terms of the sustaining engineering contract NASA awarded Bigelow in 2017, and involved no exchange of funding or other considerations between NASA and Bigelow.īigelow Aerospace, founded more than 20 years ago, was a pioneer in the development of inflatable module technology and planned to use it for a series of space stations. In that earlier notice, NASA said that Bigelow “transferred title and ownership of the BEAM to NASA Johnson Space Center” in December as its engineering contract expired. That company, the agency said, was the only one qualified to provide that support given its role as a subcontractor to Bigelow in the development of BEAM and later support of operations of the module, including engineering analyses that confirmed the module’s life could be extended to as late as 2032. 10 its intent to award a sole-source contract with ATA Engineering to handle those engineering services. The module was built by Bigelow Aerospace, which had provided support for the module until December. 18 procurement filing, NASA announced it awarded a $250,000 contract to ATA Engineering of San Diego, California, to provide engineering support services for the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an inflatable module added to the station in 2016.
WASHINGTON - NASA has hired a new company to provide engineering support for an inflatable module on the International Space Station originally built and managed by Bigelow Aerospace.
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