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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.