The moon might be more prone to fires

Engineers love a good practical challenge, especially when it comes to spaceflight. But there’s one particular challenge facing the crewed missions of the near future that scares mission planners above almost all others—fire. For decades, we’ve relied on a NASA test known as NASA-STD-6001B to screen material flammability for flight. But space is much more complicated than an Earth-bound test provides for. A new paper from researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Johnson Space Center and Case Western Reserve University details a planned mission to test the flammability of materials on the moon’s surface—where they expect flame to act much differently than it does here on Earth.