NASA once sent an uncrewed Cygnus cargo spacecraft away from the International Space Station and then ignited combustible materials inside it. The unusual experiment was designed to help researchers study how fire behaves and spreads in microgravity.
The experiment was part of NASA’s Spacecraft Fire Safety Demonstration Project, known as Saffire. The program used uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft after their missions to the ISS, allowing researchers to conduct combustion experiments without putting astronauts aboard the station in the test environment.
