NASA just lately concluded the general venture of its Spacecraft Fireplace Protection Experiment, or Saffire, striking a blazing finish to an eight-year collection of investigations that equipped insights into hearth’s habits in house.
The general experiment, Saffire-VI, introduced to the Global Area Station in August 2023 and concluded its venture on Jan. 9, when the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft it used to be flying on safely burned up all over deliberate re-entry into Earth’s environment.
Dr. David City, essential investigator, and Dr. Gary Ruff, venture supervisor at NASA’s Glenn Analysis Middle in Cleveland, have led the Saffire venture from Northeast Ohio since its preliminary spark in 2016. All over the experiment collection, researchers collected information NASA will use to strengthen venture protection and tell long run spacecraft and spacesuit designs.
“How large a fireplace does it take for issues to get unhealthy for a staff?” City stated. “This sort of paintings is finished for each and every different inhabited construction right here on Earth – constructions, planes, trains, cars, mines, submarines, ships – however we hadn’t executed this analysis for spacecraft till Saffire.”
Like earlier Saffire experiments, Saffire-VI came about inside of a unit on an uninhabited Cygnus spacecraft that had already departed from the gap station, making sure the protection of the orbiting laboratory and a extra consultant flight setting. Alternatively, this ultimate iteration of the experiment used to be distinctive on account of the upper oxygen focus and decrease drive generated within the check unit to simulate the prerequisites inside of crewed spacecraft.
Right through the nineteen Saffire-VI experiment runs, the NASA crew and opposite numbers at Northrop Grumman made quite a lot of changes to air prerequisites. They then ignited a flame on fabrics comparable to plexiglass, cotton, Nomex, and Cast Inflammability Boundary at Low-Velocity materials. A bead-lined twine throughout the unit ignited the fabrics.
“The Saffire glide unit is a wind tunnel. We’re pushing air thru it,” Ruff stated. “As soon as check prerequisites are set, we run electric present thru a skinny twine, and the fabrics ignite.”
Cameras inside of allowed the crew to look at the flame whilst far off sensors outdoor the Saffire glide unit accrued information about what used to be going down within the Cygnus automobile. The photographs and knowledge had been collected in real-time prior to being despatched to Earth for scientists to research.
“You’ve were given a warmth free up charge and a charge of free up of combustion merchandise,” Ruff stated. “You’ll take the ones as fashion enter and expect what is going to occur in a automobile.”
The following decade of exploration and science missions will see astronauts flying deeper into house and to places that experience but to be explored. Despite the fact that the Saffire experiments were extinguished, NASA has discovered precious classes and collected mountains of information on hearth habits that can lend a hand the company design more secure spacecraft and achieve its formidable long run missions.
