Video: Normally, space and fire don’t mix well, but NASA is deliberately going to cause a “large fire” inside a Cygnus resupply vessel just to see what happens. The rocket’s launching tonight, and as always, you can watch live.
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The first part of Cygnus’s mission should hopefully not involve any fire at all: the rocket will rendezvous with the ISS, unloading supplies and new experiments. Once it’s done that, the craft will launch five tiny CubeSats, then reposition in a lower orbit away from the ISS and gently combust. The fire is supposed to be a metre in length, and the hope is that watching a fire in microgravity, inside a spaceship, will give NASA useful insights for future missions.
The launch window opens at 2:05pm AEDT (11:05pm Eastern), and assuming that nothing goes wrong, Cygnus will rendezvous with the ISS at 9:00pm AEDT Saturday night (6:00am Eastern).
[NASA]