The International Space Station (ISS) will be testing a new module that will eventually help toward long duration spaceflight to places like Mars. If that isn't cool enough, the module, named BEAM, will be delivered by the private SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in 2015! This is another example of the private industry taking on the challenges of spaceflight and coordinating not only with the US government, but the other governments involved with the ISS as well. I've covered the previous SpaceX launches here.
The astronauts inside of the ISS will be testing the BEAM module to make sure it is up to task. If you want to check out where they'll be testing, check out this video from inside the ISS that I found this while browsing CNET's Australian site.
In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan.
