China’s Shenzhou 16 astronauts performed an eye-raising experiment in house involving bare flames aboard the Tiangong house station.
Astronauts Gui Haichao and Zhu Yangzhu lit a candle throughout a dwell lecture broadcast from China’s Tiangong house station on Sept. 21 to show how flames burn in microgravity. Strikingly, the flames seem almost spherical, somewhat than the teardrop-shaped flames we’re conversant in again on Earth.
Lit candles on Earth produce flames formed by buoyancy-driven convection, with scorching air rising and chilly air descending. That combustion convection present is weak within the microgravity setting of low Earth orbit, nonetheless. This implies flames diffuse in all instructions, leading to spherical fireballs.
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The livestreamed lecture was the fourth so-called “Tiangong classroom” hosted on China’s house station. The astronauts interacted with college students in 5 school rooms throughout China, demonstrating quite a lot of microgravity phenomena. As with earlier school rooms, the astronauts demonstrated that many bodily processes behave in another way than they do on Earth.
Nevertheless the candle experiment — during which Gui strikes a match to supply a unadorned flame to gentle the candle — would seemingly be met abruptly by Worldwide House Station individuals, who’ve strict guidelines concerning flammable supplies and bare flames.
I made this – that point ESA astronaut @Astro_Alex made Mission Management suppose he might need snuck an precise candle onto @Space_Station. It is superb what you are able to do with an outdated penlight and a few spare metallic tape: https://t.co/5UvfA1kC8j pic.twitter.com/TFlHX42YOpMarch 9, 2021
Strict fireplace security measures aboard the ISS are partially a response to a major fireplace on the Russian house station Mir in in 1997.
Combustion in microgravity has been the topic of quite a few experiments on the ISS, however normally utilizing a specially-designed combustion built-in rack, conserving fireplace remoted and contained.
Tiangong additionally has its Combustion Experiment Rack (CER) for severe analysis on this space.
