Skip to Main Content  How to Build the Perfect Drop  Pin it  How
to Build the Perfect Drop  Science on Flight Day 5 of MSL-1
July 5, 1997 12:30 p.m. CDT  DCE burn on MSL-1/MET
03/02:34Squeezing out a drop of fuel and lighting it off in
microgravity (photo at right) so you can study how it burns is a
complex task that has taken almost 40 years to figure out and
demonstrate. Even getting long periods of weightlessness aboard
Spacelab was not enough to ensure that the experiments could be
done. Special gear was needed to form and ignite the droplet,
then scientists had to figure out how best to observe the
fireball so they could extract meaningful data that could be
applied here on Earth.  Fires in space have been a popular item
among news writers covering the MSL- mission, but few have
explored how the fires are set up in facilities such as the
Droplet Combustion Experiment (DCE).  "The idea of space-based
droplet combustion has been around for about 15 years," said Dr.
Anthony Marchese of Rowan University in