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space lettuce,” said NASA’s Trent Smith after Veggie produced the first plants in 2014. The gardening experiment will not only help by providing food. The plants will draw carbon dioxide from the cabin air. And the as- tronauts might enjoy practicing a little space gardening. Fire in Space ire is a big part of space flight. After all, without powerful, flam- ing rockets, astronauts would not reach beyond our atmosphere. But once in space, fire is rare, since there is no oxygen, which fire needs to burn. But fire can happen inside the space station or space shuttle, since air in there lets the astronauts breathe. Fire safety is a very big part of training. Every astronaut, scientist or not, has to learn what to do and where to go in case of a fire on board. Just like in school, they practice with fire drills. But while fire is a danger, it is also a source of some important on- board experiments by astronaut/scientists. Scientists use the glove box (page 25) to burn small items and study the results. For instance, close images of flame in space show that the air around the flame moves differently in zero-G than on Earth. Knowing how fire burns in zero-G also teaches experts how to put out any possible fires. “Astronauts are all very excited to do our [fire] experiments because space fires really do look quite alien,” NASA engineer Dan Dietrich told Smithsonian Magazine. Why alien? Fire on Earth moves with gravity along with the oxygen in the air.Without gravity, the flame follows the oxygen in more random patterns.Where a match on Earth produces a teardrop-shaped flame, in space, the shape can be quite varied. Special cameras also show that the heat in space flame varies greatly, too.

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