Combustion Processes and Applications in Reduced Gravity

Combustion experiments have taken place over the last decade in an attempt to understand the importance of gravity in the flammability and fire spread rates of gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels. The principal output of the microgravity combustion modelling and experiments has been: (1) new fundamental understanding which requires modification of many aspects of combustion science textbooks, (2) recommendations on research, practices and policies as they relate to NASA's crew-inhabited spacecraft, and (3) spinoff technologies principally in miniaturized and/or new instrumentation. In anticipation of space exploration outside of low-Earth orbit, some of the experiments considered Lunar and Martian gravitational settings. The results of such experiments and those in microgravity are described below.