CAPE CANAVERAL: Nasa hit a snag while releasing air into an experimental inflatable room at the International Space Station on Thursday and put everything on hold for at least a day.

Mission Control ordered astronaut Jeffrey Williams to call it quits after the operation had dragged on for more than two hours, with the compartment expanding just a few inches.

The inflation process could resume as early as Friday, depending on what engineers learn. “Thanks for all your patience today, and we’ll hope for better luck tomorrow,” Mission Control radioed. “That’s space business,” Williams replied.

It was supposed to take barely an hour for the commercial test chamber known as BEAM — the world’s first inflatable room for astronauts — to swell four times in volume.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2016