Bigelow Aerospace and NASA have expanded the B.E.A.M

"Houston, you have an epic balloon room in space. NASA has inflated the first-ever expandable room for astronauts on the International Space Station, a round module that made occasional popcorn-like popping sounds as it reached its full size.

It took NASA astronaut Jeff Williams on the station more than seven hours to inflate the privately built Bigelow Expandable Activity Module today (May 28). The new space room, called BEAM for short, was built for NASA by Bigelow Aerospace. Its inflation went at a glacial pace — a safety precaution since BEAM is the first of its kind — with Williams reporting that he heard popping noises with almost every short burst of air he fed into the module through a manual valve."

With the experience NASA and Bigelow Aerospace will learn from this, coupled with Bigelow's Genesis I and Genesis II, we are even closer to a fully inflated Station and possibly putting a research Station on the Surface of the Moon and Mars.

Bigelow Aerospace BEAM Module attached to the ISS

"The International Space Station gained a brand new room on Saturday (April 16), but it will be another month before it grows large enough for the astronauts to enter.

A first-of-its-type inflatable structure, the BEAM — or Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — built by Bigelow Aerospace, was attached to the rear-facing port of the space station's Tranquility node. It is the first new addition to the orbiting outpost in five years."

Bigelow already has proven their HAB Technology with Genesis I and Genesis II, and they have several other projects they have proposed and built but not launched. Hopefully with the BEAM NASA will get over their distaste of Inflatable HAB's, and start trying to use them in orbit and My biggest hope on the Moon and on Mars.