SAFFIRE (Spacecraft Fire Safety Demonstration) is an international collaborative project to investigate fire behavior in space. The experiments will be carried out onboard the CYGNUS-Spacecraft (Orbital Sciences Corporation) that is a service spacecraft to the ISS. During three subsequent flights (Orb 5,6 & 7) comparably large open fires will be initiated and observed after the spacecraft has de-docked from the ISS and is on its way back to the atmosphere.

On the Orb 6 flight (presumably 2016), ZARM will investigate the flame propagation behavior along a surface structured PMMA sample. The experiment is complemented through ground based research and numerical simulations. The results shall support the development of science based qualification standards.

Members of the international Topical Team are:

David Urban, NASA, USA, (Principal Investigator)
Gary Ruff, NASA, USA
Grunde Jomaas, Dansk Technical University, DK (ESA Topical Team Leader)
José Torero, University of Queensland, AUS
Adam Cowlard, The University of Edinburgh, GB
Guillaume Legros, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, F
Christian Eigenbrod, ZARM, D
Osamu Fujita, Hokkaido University, J
James S. T´ien, Case Western Reserve University, USA
Carlos Fernandez-Pello, University of California Berkeley, USA
Sébastien Rouvreau, Belisama R&D, F
Nickolay Smirnov, Russian Academy of Sciences, RUS

The project is supported through ESA