ISS Fluids & Combustion Facility

The Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF) is a set of two International Space Station (ISS) research facilities designed to support physical and biological experiments in support of technology development and validation in space. The FCF consists of two modular, reconfigurable racks called the Combustion Integration Rack (CIR) and the Fluids Integration Rack (FIR). The CIR and FIR were developed at NASAʼs Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio, under a prime contract with ZIN Technologies. The CIR was launched to the ISS on the Space Shuttle STS-126 in 2008 and the FIR was launched on STS-128 in 2009. Both racks are operated remotely from the Glenn ISS Payload Operations Center (GIPOC) at GRC. The sustaining engineering and operations team is under a prime contract with ZIN Technologies.

NASA Public Affairs Officer Brandi Dean speaks with Robert Corban, Fluids and Combustion Facility Manager, about the research being performed aboard the International Space Station using this state-of-the-art facility.

Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR)

The Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR), located in the U.S. Laboratory Module (Destiny), enables investigators to perform combustion research to understand the fundamentals of the combustion process, understand fire safety, and methods for suppression of fires in space. The CIR’s main feature is a 100-liter combustion chamber to provide the necessary safety features necessary for the … Read the rest ⇢

Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR)

The Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR), located in the U.S. Laboratory Module (Destiny), enables investigators from multiple disciplines a large, optics bench platform to integrate a large “mini-facilities” or configuration of optical components similar to their experiment in their ground laboratories. Developed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, the FIR was launched to the International Space Station … Read the rest ⇢