4. Adjustable Smoke Detector Where theres smoke, theres fire. NASA engineers knew that simple fact when they were designing Skylab in the 1970s. Skylab was the first U.S. space station, and the astronauts would need to know if a fire had started or if noxious gases were loose in the vehicle. Teaming up with Honeywell Corporation, NASA invented the first adjustable smoke detector with different sensitivity levels to prevent false alarms. You can read about smoke detectors in more detail in How Smoke Detectors Work, but the first one to hit the consumer market is called the ionization smoke detector. That essentially means that it uses a radioactive element called americium-241 to spot smoke or harmful gasses. When clean air particles of oxygen and nitrogen move through smoke detectors, the americium-241 ionizes them, which creates an electrical current. If foreign smoke particles enter the smoke detector, it disrupts that interaction, triggering the alarm. NASA and Honeywell Corporation developed a smoke detector for the first U.S. space station, Skylab.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:45:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015