Fire and space are two words that a normal person will predictably correlate to the science fiction movies and now NASA will try to do so in real life.
As reported by the U.S. Space Agency, NASA is going to examine and test the effects of a large fire on a set in space by blazing off the inside of unmanned orbiting spacecraft. Before this, the space agency had set off some fires that were tiny and controlled, but never performed the testing regarding the behavior of large flames inside a spacecraft.
The research is termed as very important and crucial for the safety of the current and future space missions. After the Cygnus resupply vehicle undocks from the ISS and is at a safe distance, the ground-based operators will send a command to initiate the Spacecraft Fire Experiment-1 called as Saffire-1. On receiving the command, a sealed box inheriting a meter-long strip of cotton-fiberglass composite will burst out into flames.
Gary Ruff, the co-investigator of Saffire-1 said that understanding fire in space has been the focus of several experiments over the years and many small, centimeter-sized fires have been lit in space before. For getting more knowledge about it, we have to take a look at something that is more realistic and large.
The fire will be short running about 15 to 20 minutes and the footage will be recorded by two cameras placed on a side of the burning material, whereas the radiometers will measure the heat coming off the either side. The observations will be received and return to the planet after 8 days of the experiment when the Orbital ATK gains the control.
Main goal behind the experiment is to measure the size of the flames, how rapidly they expand, the amount of gas emitted and the heat emitted out. The results of the experiment will be used in the spacecraft and gear worn by astronauts to check how much fire resistance is required.