NASA is going to spark a big fire inside one of its spacecraft
Turns out NASA doesn't know. But they're going to find out by doing just that.
During the next International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission, NASA is going to intentionally spark a fire inside one of its unmanned resupply vehicles after its mission is complete. The purpose of this test is simply to "see what happens," writer Maddie Stone at Gizmodo reports.
Here's how NASA's Saffire-I fire experiment is going to go do down.
Once empty, NASA's Cygnus resupply container will undock from the ISS and propel itself to a sufficiently safe distance (about 4 hours away, according to Gizmodo) and on a different orbit from the ISS. Then NASA officials on the ground will remotely spark a fire inside a sealed, three-foot long box full of "cotton-fiberglass composite."
The fire is expected to burn for about 15 to 20 minutes, according to Gizmodo. Meanwhile, special temperature, carbon dioxide, and oxygen sensors will record the whole thing. A camera will also film the blaze, and heat sensors will gather data from both sides of the flame.
All of this data will then be tossed back to Earth inside Cygnus itself eight days later. That is assuming, of course, the spacecraft survives.
Astronauts have intentionally sparked small controlled fires in space before, but this is the first time NASA is attempting an experiment of this size.
But in space, buoyancy does not exist, and the flame could spread out in all directions.
NASA scientists know that flames can be erratic in space, but they don't fully understand their properties and mechanics. That's because - up until now - experiments like this have been extremely dangerous. They've also (luckily!) never had a large fire on a spacecraft to learn from.
And while they have tested much smaller fires in space, they aren't enough to understand what would happen with a much larger one.
Read more about NASA's Saffire-I experiment here.
[h/t Gizmodo]