Ensuring a safe environment for astronauts is the top priority for all crewed space missions. Inside the space station, astronauts may have to deal with small-scale fire experiments, like the recent BASS-M experiment.
Fire Safety Experiment Series
Understanding the behavior of fire in microgravity and how different materials propagate flames in space is crucial in developing future crew spacecraft. This is very helpful in informing operational protocols for dealing with fire emergencies, especially when astronauts do not possess the ability to leave a spacecraft or return to Earth quickly.
To address this challenge, a series of Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiments (Saffire) was established to investigate large-scale flame growth and material flammability limits in microgravity. After completing its primary supply mission for the International Space Station, the experiments are ignited in a Cygnus cargo vehicle. The vehicle departed the station before its planned destructive reentry to Earth.
Saffire is managed by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division, a pioneer in innovative approaches and public-private partnerships. It aims to develop advanced vital capabilities, prototype systems, and validate operational concepts for future crewed space missions.
The series involves six missions. Saffire-I was launched in March 2016, Saffire-II in October 2016, Saffire-III in March 2017, Saffire-IV in February 2020, Saffire-V in October 2020, and Saffire-VI in August 2023.
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The Fiery Conclusion
On January 9, NASA officially finished the last mission of its Saffire series. This ends an eight-year series of investigations that offered insights into fire behavior in space. Saffire-VI concluded its mission when the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft it was flying on burned up safely as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.
The team behind the Saffire project was led by Dr. David Urban, the principal investigator, and Dr. Gary Ruff, the project manager, at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Throughout the entire experiment series, scientists collected data that can be used by NASA to enhance mission safety and inform future spacecraft and space suit designs.
Like other Saffire missions, Sapphire-VI was carried out inside a unit on an uninhabited spacecraft that had already departed from the ISS. This was done while ensuring the safety of the orbiting laboratory and an ideal flight environment. However, this final iteration of the experiment series was unique due to its higher oxygen concentration and lower pressure generated in the test unit.
Saffire-VI had 19 experiment runs, during which the NASA team and experts from Northrop Grumman made different adjustments to air conditions. The team then ignited a flame on materials like cotton, plexiglass, Nomex, and Solid Inflammability Boundary at Low-Speed fabrics. A bead-lined wire inside the unit ignited the materials.
Cameras were installed inside to enable the researchers to observe the flame. Meanwhile, remote sensors outside the flow unit gathered data on what was happening in the Cygnus vehicle. The images and data were collected in real time before being sent to Earth for further analysis.
In the coming decades, space and interplanetary missions will involve astronauts flying deeper into space and to regions that have yet to be explored. Though the Saffire experiments have concluded, NASA has learned valuable insights and gathered much information about fire behavior. This can help the agency build safer spacecraft and accomplish its ambitious missions in the future.
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