Video: Inside the International Space Station’s Inflatable Addition

This April, NASA launched into a space a payload to the International Space Station containing an experimental facility that attached to the space station and since then has been slowly inflating. It's now ready for ISS astronauts to test the viability of the structure as a permanent habitat. 

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module habitat, better known as BEAM, is white and puffy and resembles a cross between a marshmallow and a bouncy castle. But the squishy environment has a lot of potential for the future of manned space exploration.

"The rigid part of the structure is similar to the steel belts in your tire. It's all flexible, just like your tires are flexible," said creator Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace. "Our spacecraft are potentially adaptable to the surfaces of foreign bodies in the way of being a base. So we have architectures for that to create a lunar base or a Martian base."

For now, the structure will remain in the testing phase on board the ISS. But Bigelow's prediction's for the far-future? He posits a BEAM geriatric facility in space he could be a part of.

To learn more, check out the video below from NASA: