IMOD animation for THALES ALENIA SPACE

Project Daniele Bedini

IMOD, Inflatable Module Demonstration test. All the activity was performed by Thales Alenia Space – Italia under ESA contract.

IMOD is a scaled prototype of a space inflatable habitat: these structures will provide a higher habitable volume (500 m3 range) wrt current space metallic modules in spite of a compacted volume at Launch.

I-MOD, is a Reduced Scale Breadboard for ground validation of inflatable technologies in next future orbiting & surface manned habitats. Thales Alenia Space has performed the following Tests:
– Packaging & Deployment
– Shape Measurement
– Proof Pressure
– Pressure Decay
– Burst Pressure

– Window integration

BEDINI DANIELE’s team was appointed by Thales-Alenia-Space for developing the ‘virtual simulation movie’ for the construction phases and Simulation Test Renders for the Inflatable Structure of I-MOD, tested for ESA in Torino’s facilities. This ESA test was useful to evaluate the materials affordability, the necessary actions to assemble the module and inflation steps. This terrestrial test is preparatory to an experiment/test in Space, foreseen in the next years.

I-MOD is the only European example of this technology. This inflatable structure will be able to be applied to the construction of orbital, planetary habitat, as well as, we hope, of private infrastructures like ‘Space Hotel’, as shown in the render realized by BEDINI & PARTNERS.