NASA is about to light its biggest-ever fire inside a doomed space garbage truck. The purpose of this test is simply to “see what happens,” writer Maddie Stone at Gizmodo reports.
Why? The space agency has no idea what’d happen if a big fire broke out on a spacecraft. And if you’re exploring the final frontier with people, fire is a pretty important risk to understand.
The space agency will light the controlled fire inside an experiment aboard a discarded Cygnus resupply vehicle. The bus-size spacecraft safely disconnected from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. ET, and NASA will light the spark around 2:30 p.m. ET. Here’s how the fire-in-space experiment, called Saffire-I, is going down.
Lighting a Controlled Fire in Space
Over the past few months, astronauts moved all the supplies aboard the Cygnus into the ISS – then packed the spacecraft full of garbage.
NASA has since undocked the spacecraft and propelled it away from the space station. Mission controllers also put it into a different orbit.
Once the Cygnus maintains a safe distance – NASA hasn’t said exactly how many miles – officials on the ground will remotely spark a fire inside Saffire-1: a sealed, three-foot long box full of “cotton-fiberglass composite.” (The goal is not to set the entire ship aflame.)
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