Cosmic experiments on a floating lab: Notes on the future, from ISS

At 400 km from the surface of Earth, a very different rulebook for physics kicks in. Fire: Thousands of flames have been lit in a series of experiments on board ISS, to investigate the underlying physics of flame structure and behaviour, from flame growth and decay to fire-extinction in space. Experiments on ISS also led to the discovery of steadily burning cool flames, which burn at extremely low temperatures. “In the reduced gravity of space, fire can behave unexpectedly and could be more hazardous,” Paul Ferkul, a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, has said. BEC was first achieved on Earth 25 years ago, but the microgravity and super-low temperatures of space make it exponentially easier to create and study them in an environment such as the ISS Cold Atom Lab.