NASA’s Latest Experiment Will Set Orbiting Space Craft On Fire
In a first of its kind, NASA will be conducting a spacecraft fire experiment on 22 March 2016, to study how fire reacts in a weightless environment. Termed as Saffire, the experiment involves a Cygnus cargo vehicle, which will be set on fire during its return journey from the International Space Station (ISS).
Cygnus is sent with supplies such as food, water and other requisite materials and comes back with the trash that is filled inside the cargo ship by the astronauts to burn up in the atmosphere. As per reports, the vehicle will be intentionally set on fire on its return journey, this Tuesday. The engineers from NASA's Glenn Research Center will remotely ignite a large swath of cloth contained in a module inside Cygnus.
The experiment is expected to take a few hours and the activities will be recorded by high definition video cameras and sensors inside the cargo ship. After the experiment, Cygnus will remain in orbit for 7 days and send the data to ground stations. Then, it will burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
Till now, very small scale combustion experiments have been conducted with the space shuttle and the ISS because of safety concerns. But after the Apollo 1 fire tragedy which took the lives of 3 astronauts, NASA had become very conscious about fire safety. The accident had exposed the NASA's lack of preparedness to handle fire hazards and emergencies.
Studies suggest that this experiment is more like an attempt at improving spacecraft design safety. According to Gary Ruff, Saffire project manager, the experiment is aimed at gaining deeper understanding of fire behavior in space. It will help them in developing better materials, technologies and procedures which will, in turn, increase flight and crew safety.
Since NASA intends to take up more missions and plans to send humans on long spaceflights into the solar system, it is important that they have a strong understanding of microgravity fire which Saffire should, hopefully, provide them with.
