BEAM, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, is highlighted in its expanded configuration in this computer rendering.

NASA plans to keep an experimental expandable module attached to the International Space Station beyond its original two-year lifetime, the agency announced Oct. 2.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...