Skip to footer

Spacecraft Fire Experiment-II seeks to answer a burning question

Mission controllers ignited NASA's Spacecraft Fire Experiment-II on Monday, kicking off the second in a series of fire-setting experiments.

|
NASA TV/AP
The Cygnus resupply ship, above, slowly approaches the International Space Station before the Canadarm2 reaches out and grapples it on Oct. 23.

How does a fire grow in space? 

That's the question that NASA aims to answer through its Saffire experiment, a three-part investigation of how fire spreads in a microgravity environment that launched in March. 

The experiment began its second leg on Monday, when mission controllers on the ground ignited NASA's Spacecraft Fire Experiment-II, otherwise known as Saffire-II. Saffire-II will take place aboard the private, uncrewed Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which departed from the International Space Station on Monday after a monthlong stay.

The goal of the Saffire experiments, researchers say, is to provide a better understanding of how different materials propagate flames in space, information that NASA says is "immensely important" when it comes to developing new spacecraft, subsystems, and instruments.

"A spacecraft fire is one of the greatest crew safety concerns for NASA and the international space exploration community," said Gary Ruff, Saffire project manager, in a March news release. 

Saffire-I, the first experiment in the series of three, burned a piece of cotton-fiberglass cloth that was 1.3 feet wide by 3.3 feet long aboard a different Cygnus spacecraft in June. The fire that ensued was the largest intentionally set in space, according to NASA officials. 

Next, Saffire-II will burn a mix of nine different materials routinely used in space to see how each reacts to flames, including flame retardant fabrics used for astronaut clothing, structures used for storage containers and silicone composites, and the acrylic glass used for spacecraft windows.

Each remotely-operated experiment will take place inside a 3x5 foot module, as Lonnie Shekhtman reported for The Christian Science Monitor in March:

The 3- by 5-foot experiment box will be split into two compartments. On one side will be a computer and instruments such as sensors, high definition video cameras and signal processing equipment. They will measure oxygen, carbon dioxide, heat, pressure and flame growth, and record the flame.

The other side of the box will hold the equipment that will ignite the flame and burn the materials inside, all of which are used routinely for astronaut clothing and for other things on spacecraft. 

The goal of the experiment, according to principal investigator David Urban, is to answer two questions: "Will an upward spreading flame continue to grow or will microgravity limit the size? Secondly, what fabrics and materials will catch fire and how will they burn?" 

The Cygnus spacecraft used for Saffire-II, which is designed to be disposable, will stay in orbit until Nov. 27, after which it will be "steered into a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere," Space.com reports.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Spacecraft Fire Experiment-II seeks to answer a burning question
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1122/Spacecraft-Fire-Experiment-II-seeks-to-answer-a-burning-question
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe