The TransHab project was canceled by Congress in 2000,[7][8][9] and Bigelow Aerospace purchased the rights to the patents developed by NASA to pursue private space station designs.

One application of the toroidal BEAM design was as a centrifuge demo preceding further developments of the NASA Nautilus-X multi-mission exploration concept vehicle.

[20] During a press event on 12 March 2015, at the Bigelow Aerospace facility in North Las Vegas, Nevada, the completed ISS flight unit, compacted and with two Canadarm2 grapple fixtures attached, was displayed for the media.

[27] On 16 April 2016, British astronaut Tim Peake extracted BEAM from Dragon's trunk using Canadarm2, and installed it on the aft port of Tranquility node.

[32][33] On 6 June 2016, astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka opened the hatch to BEAM and entered to collect an air sample, download expansion data from sensors, and install monitoring equipment.

[34][35] A second round of tests took place on 29 September 2016 when astronaut Kathleen Rubins entered the module to install temporary monitoring equipment.

[36] NASA noted in May 2017 that, after spending one year in space, the BEAM instrumentation had recorded "a few probable micrometeoroid debris impacts" but that the module's protective layers had resisted penetration.

Early results from monitors inside the module have shown that galactic cosmic radiation levels are comparable to those in the rest of the space station.

[43] If BEAM performs favorably, it could lead to development of expandable habitation structures for future crews traveling in deep space.

[46] In a 2002 NASA study, it was suggested that materials that have high hydrogen contents, such as polyethylene, can reduce primary and secondary radiation to a greater extent than metals, such as aluminium.

The module's inflatable nature would provide room for up to three crew or tourists to spacewalk simultaneously, compared with a maximum of two that can operate outside the ISS.