Because Spacex helps an ISS crowded, NASA has improvements for sleepy astronauts

The International Space Station is increasingly crowded, NASA’s astronauts prepare a new design of a temporary bed, and it looks like it will need more new systems over the next few years. The crew of sleeping accommodation alternately, or Casa, arrived at the ISS earlier this month, with the SpaceX Crew-2 mission recently showing why it was needed.

Even though the ISS might be great – about the size of a five-room house, NASA said – not much told the crew accommodation. Usually, there is room for seven, spread between US, European and Russian modules.

It was fine, regardless of when everything was crowded with new astronauts and cosmonauts. “When there are more astronaut ship stations rather than the quarter crew, the crew member works with flight controllers to identify the location of” stands “while the crew sleeps during the short submission period,” NASA explained. “It is usually located in the module with the least activity during the submission period, such as the QUEST AIRLOCK or Japanese KIBO module, and can include an anchored spacecraft.”

When the NASA shuttle program was stopped, the ISS shifted to what was known as indirect handover. First, three astronauts and cosmonauts that come out will leave the space station on the Soyuz Russian spaceship. Days or even weeks later, three new replacements will be launched and anchored with ISS, taking praise back to six.

However, the beginning of the launch under the NASA commercial crew program had changed the process. For starters, there are now four crew on the spaceship, not three, meaning that the seventh bed can be occupied. But the handover itself is now overlapping.

In what was called a direct handover, the crew arrived before the old crew departed. For now they will come, from we launched at least, on the crew spacecraft, although finally Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will also travel. Either way, that means – for a short period – there are 11 people on a spacecraft.

It was not the most residents’ ever seen, with a period of time in the history of ISS where 13 crew had been there at once. All the same, it must be squeezing, no less important when you find a bed. Accommodation Sleep Alcoh Kru is a NASA repair.

Sent to the ISS as part of the Northrop Grumman CRS-15 mission earlier this year, Casa is a part-bunk bed, parts-murphy. Previously installed in April, basically folding into bed for astronauts or cosmonauts, but – because the room is clear on the premium – can be used as a cargo storage rack all the time.

However, how things can develop in the coming years, however, it is not clear. Russia has said that she aims to launch its own space station program from 2025, with work seems to have taken place in the first module. Based, in part, on the design and technology used by international space stations, the Russian version will also be built little by little in orbit.

Whether it will also see the Russian Space Agency Russia’s entirely interesting from the ISS project with NASA still has to be seen. Russia has indicated that it wants to work with China on space projects, but the US law currently prohibits NASA from working with the Chinese space agency, CNSA.