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New experiment on theInternational Space Stationmay let on tips on fight fires in quad , and back here on Earth , too .
In quad , where there is no up or down , and the atmosphere and press within the closed confines of a spacecraft are tightly controlled , blast burns other than . The Flame Extinguishment Experiment , have a go at it as FLEX , aims to considerably see how .
Color image of a fuel droplet burning in space during NASA’s Flame Extinguishment Experiment aboard the International Space Station.
For good example , in the weightless surroundings of orbit , flames can burn up at a lower temperature and require less oxygen to ignite than they do in normal gravitational attraction . Thus , fire extinguishers in spacemust usage more - concentrated material .
Another conflict is that a flame around a droplet of fuel in space can be completely spherical , while that is very different to attain on the ground . And this globular balance makes it easy to detect droplets ' behavior and to craft the calculations that explain it , the report ’s leader , University of California , San Diego , aerospace engineering professor Forman Williams , say in a instruction .
While the experiments are float more than 200 miles above Earth , they are controlled remotely fromNASA ’s John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland , Ohio . The projection is lodged inside a chamber on the International Space Station ’s Destiny faculty , and is equipped with sensors and video cameras to record the action .
Inside the chamber , lowly drop of chemicals such as heptane or methyl alcohol are set onfire , and fire for about 20 secondment . A equipment called the Multiuser Droplet Combustion Apparatus is used to ignite the droplet in various atmospheric conditions .
The first round of these experiments ran from March 2009 to December 2011 . A second round , scheduled to last at least a year , began in January . [ 6 Cool Space Shuttle Science Experiments ]
" Research leads to a better discernment of flack behavior , " Willams said . " And better sympathy ultimately chair to secure safety designs . "
The young stage of the study calculate to use the space environment to recreate conditions inside a combustion locomotive engine .
" Findings could lead to fresh designs for cleaner fuel that have a smaller carbon paper footprint and give off few pollutant , among other program , " according to a University of California , San Diego , statement .
Williams ' interest infire first ignitedwhen he was a college student at Princeton and a prof write the conservation equation of burning on a chalkboard .
" When I realized how complicated they were , I said to myself that there is enough there to last me a life-time , " Williams said .
Williams and his fellow worker design to present the results from the first bout of FLEX this summer at a symposium in Poland .
