Combustion Integrated Rack

Short Name: CIR

Facility Description

The Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR), located in the U.S. Laboratory Module (Destiny), allows investigators to perform combustion research to understand the fundamentals of the combustion process, fire safety, and methods for the suppression of fires in space. The CIR’s main feature is a 100-liter combustion chamber that provides the necessary safety features for the various combustion investigations and is the only rack on the ISS dedicated to combustion experimentation. Developed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, the CIR was launched to the ISS in November 2008 on a Space Shuttle mission (STS-126).

The CIR provides up to 90% of the required hardware to perform most future microgravity combustion experiments onboard the ISS. The remaining 10% of the hardware (fuel, igniters, etc.) is provided by the specific investigation teams. A significant amount of diagnostic hardware is designed for many of the planned experiments. The CIR accommodates experiments that address critical needs in the areas of spacecraft fire safety (i.e., fire prevention, detection, and suppression), fundamental understanding of the combustion process, flame spread, soot production, material selection, power generation, and incineration of solid wastes.

Availability: Please contact the facility manager

ISS Environment: Internal

Owner: NASA

Operator/Implementation Partner:
ZIN Technologies

Developer(s):
NASA Glenn Research Center

Facility Manager:
Nancy Hall
NASA Glenn Research Center

Manager Email:
nancy.r.hall@nasa.gov

Parent Facility:

Child Facility: SoFIE, ACME

Sponsoring Space Agency: NASA

Equipment Category: Capability

Additional Information:

CIR on NASA’s SSRE
CIR information from NASA’s Glenn Research Center

Combustion Integrated Rack