Nasa plans fire safety experiment on spacecraft on 22 March

Nasa is planning to conduct the first of three planned flight experiments in an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo vehicle on 22 March, in order to help understand the behaviour of an accidental fire in a spacecraft after it leaves Earth’s atmosphere.

Developed by Nasa’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, US, the Spacecraft Fire Experiment (Saffire), will be performed at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Involving a group of researchers from 11 US and international government agencies and universities, the experiment is expected to be remotely conducted by Saffire and Orbital ATK officials from the Orbital ATK Control Center in Dulles, Virginia.

After offloading the cargos from the vehicles at the space station, the experiment will be conducted in a module carried aboard Cygnus during its return trip to Earth.

Nasa advanced exploration system director Jason Crusan said: "Nasa’s objective is to reduce the risk of long-duration exploration missions, and a spacecraft fire is one of the biggest concerns for Nasa and the international space exploration community."

The agency said that each Saffire module is equipped to characterise and document the burning of large materials in a microgravity environment.

The samples and the environment of the experiment are similar to those found on the space station and the Orion spacecraft, which expects to carry astronauts to an asteroid and Mars mission in future.

Nasa is also planning to transmit the images and data captured from inside the module to Orbital ATK and relayed to its Glenn Research Center before the beginning of Cygnus’ destructive re-entry to Earth.

Researchers at Glenn and others involved in the experiment will analyse the data and use it to further develop technologies to protect future astronauts from a spacecraft fire.

Nasa spacecraft fire safety demonstration project manager Gary Ruff said: "Saffire will be the biggest man-made fire ever in space. Currently, we can only conduct small combustion experiments in the microgravity environment of the space station.

"Saffire will allow us to safely burn larger samples of material without added risk to the station or its crew.

"Using the Cygnus cargo vehicle to host Saffire offers a unique opportunity to conduct beneficial spacecraft fire safety research using existing mission profiles."

The first Saffire experiment will evaluate a large-scale microgravity fire using sample material, while, the next two flight experiments to be conducted later this year will examine oxygen flammability limits using samples and assess a second large-scale microgravity fire respectively.

The experiment is sponsored by the advanced exploration systems division in Nasa’s human exploration and operations mission directorate.

Three more experiment modules will be designed and built by Glenn and will be launched in Orbital ATK cargo vehicles beginning in 2018.

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Image: A team of scientists and engineers tests the components of Saffire I and Saffire II. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.