SAFFIRE - Playing with fire in space

[VaPaL]

On its way back to earth, Cygnus Spacecraft will perform a series of fire experiments, burning piece about 1m in size. It will be the largest fire experiment in space, it will only be perfomed once Cygnus is far enough from ISS to guarantee safety.

"SAFFIRE aims to study a realistic fire on a space vehicle, looking at flame growth, temperatures and oxygen use to assess how microgravity and limited oxygen affect the properties of a fire. Data from SAFFIRE will be used to improve fire safety on future crewed spacecraft and help NASA in choosing materials for future vehicles."

About this experiment: About previous ones
http://spaceflight101.com/saffire-i-combustion-experiment/

About previous ones:
http://spaceflight101.com/iss-previous-combustion-studies/
 

Some cool images from the second link:

[VaPaL]

 

[VaPaL]

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/iss/nasa-glenn-researchers-study-results-of-saffire-i-experiment/

 

Quote

On Earth, if a sofa is on fire, the fire grows at an exponential rate. As time goes by it gets worse and worse a lot faster. But in this sample in zero-g—the spread rate was constant. The fire didn’t ‘take off’ so to speak. That indicates that we may have a little more time to respond to a spacecraft fire.

 

[CptRichardson]

2 hours ago, VaPaL said:

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/iss/nasa-glenn-researchers-study-results-of-saffire-i-experiment/

 

 

Fascinating. Today, we had a 100% chance... *Opens umbrella* of SCIENCE!