Fire In Space

In space fires burns a completely different way. On earth fire burns by heated gases rise from the fire which draws oxygen in and pushing combustion products out. In space it burns a completely different way by molecular diffusion by drawing oxygen to the flame and combustion products away from the flame at a rate of 100 times slower than the buoyant flow on earth. Also it burns at a lower temperature and uses less oxygen, which means that the material used to put out space fires need to be more concentrated. Well since March 2009, NASA has been conducting fire experiments in space on the international space station. It has conducted over 200 tests to better understand how the fire behaves in space or microgravity. After all this research and tests conducted NASA still does not understand how fire truly reacts in space. But the great thing that comes out of all this research is that this could potentially improve fire suppression systems on earth and space.