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Active TRL 5 (started at 3, targeting 6)
Future missions to the Moon and Mars pose enhanced fire safety risks due to longer durations and increased oxygen. Full scale fire testing, such as those performed during previous space programs, is the most straightforward way to obtain an understanding of this risk. These tests are difficult to implement in 1-g and even more challenging to attempt in reduced gravity. The ability to model fire scenarios using a vehicle mock-up would enable commercial partners to design more effective fire safety systems and provide the ability for NASA to validate their designs. A model of a fire in a spacecraft in microgravity has been developed based on data provided by NASA’s Saffire project. Similar models need to be developed to determine the effect of a fire in a space craft in partial gravity.
A fire safety database and standard are being developed by NASA and NESC to develop prescriptive and performance-based requirements for certification of future spacecraft and habitats. Computational simulations of spacecraft and habitats are being developed to perform parametric studies to feed the database. Experiments are being conducted in other projects in the fire safety portfolio that will help determine fire hazards and serve as inputs to vehicle and habitat simulations.
The anticipated benefit of this work to is provide realistic models of worst-case spacecraft fire scenarios to determine the impact of such a fire on the crew and vehicle.
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