American Space Agency NASA has successfully directed its Saffire-I science experiment in space last week. Saffire-I was performed to study the behaviour of fire in no-gravity. This experiment was conducted onboard Orbital ATK’s Cygnus Cargo Capsule.
The cargo capsule is filled with more than 1814 kgs of trash containing cotton-fiberglass material and released from the International Space Station (ISS). The fire started inside the space vehicle and it was captured by many cameras and sensors inside the module.
NASA has released a video that shows the process and what happened during the experiment. The fire shows up green with LED lights followed by orange waves. The entire process lasted for eight minutes. It is unpredictable because of zero gravity.
“The first of our planned three Saffire experiments operated as designed which is a great credit to all the people at NASA who played a role in its development,” said Gary A. Ruff from NASA. Within few days, the next Saffire experiments will be launched on the next Cygnus vehicle.
“The success of this experiment opens the door to future large combustion experiments in the microgravity environment and directly supports the development of technologies and materials that will make deep space exploration spacecraft safer.”