“We don’t have the official results of that testing, but we are told it went very, very well, so we are really excited about that,” Lindsey said.

Key to SNC’s habitat design is its ability to grow in volume once it is launched into space. The Large Inflatable Fabric Environment, or LIFE, habitat can start out compact enough to fit inside an 18-foot (5.4 meters) rocket fairing but then expand to 27 feet in diameter and 27 feet long (8 by 8 m).