Scientists have conducted a controlled fire in space – BBC

there was the largest fire in the history of astronautics in Earth orbit. The fire started in the Cygnus cargo ship, which is the eve of the undocked from the International Space Station. The fire, however, that – training, or rather –

experimental, and spend it, scientists have conceived a long time, setup for this experiment was launched with the ship in March of this year.

The source of the fire has become red-hot wire, which set fire to a large piece of cloth made of cotton and fiberglass measuring 1 m 40 cm burning rag is not dangerous -. it is burned in a special two-chamber container. One chamber contains materials which, in fact, had to burn, in the second there was equipment for the control and monitoring of man-made fire – various sensors and high-resolution cameras

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An unusual experiment was to better understand the mechanisms of the spread of fire in conditions of weightlessness. This will help protect future astronauts during long space missions, since the threat of open flame -. One of the major risks of stay of astronauts in spacecraft

The most famous fire in the history of manned space flight was a fire that happened on board the station ” World “February 23, 1997. The fire broke out due to a malfunction of the oxygen checkers atmosphere regeneration, when the board was an international crew of six people.

Then the fire was eliminated, and the crew had to wear masks.

«Fire in the bay is a serious concern to NASA», – said the head of the experiment Harry Raff

experiment Spacecraft fire experiment, or Saffire-1, will become the largest fire in the space, however. not the first. In previous experiments, the researchers also experimented with open burning, but then open flame does not exceed the size of a plastic card.

To understand and experiment to find out how the open burning in weightlessness, scientists are trying to more than one decade. In recent years in orbit was conducted a lot of experiments to study the shape and temperature of the flame when burning different substances.

However, the implementation of large-scale experiments in the ISS environment prevents the presence of the crew,

so NASA came to the idea to inflict fire in undocked insulated ship.

the experiment itself will last about two hours, during this time, scientists will monitor the growth of the flame, as the temperature increases and the way limitations of oxygen in the ambient air affects the spread of fire. Arson repeated twice – at different air speeds throughput burning material

First, the fabric going to set fire to one side, then the other end to the fire went against the direction of air flow.. “Experiment Saffire need for a better understanding of how fire behaves in space, which will help NASA develop new materials, technologies and procedures to reduce the risk of the life of the crew and space flight safety”, – said Raff. According to preliminary data, the experiment was a success, with videos arranged by a fire at NASA promised to publish soon.

After NASA engineers managed the fire do not want to stop and continue to burn.

Two similar experiments will be carried out within the framework of OA-5 and OA-7 mission until the end of the year. In the course of these experiments will be ignited materials commonly used in space – for plexiglass porthole, astronauts and other clothing. And the Cygnus ship, which was held today a fire June 22, will descend from orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.