Flame Retardant Polyamide Fibers for Space Crew Clothing

NASA#39;s vision is to eventually establish human outpost stations on the Moon and explore Mars and other destinations further out of the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). nbsp;During these space missions, astronauts need to be protected inside space vehicles and space habitats with an atmosphere of 36% oxygen at a pressure of 8.2 psi. To address this need, intrinsically flame-retardant (FR) halogen-free polyamide fibers and fabrics were developed for space crew clothing during the Phase I project. FR polymers were melt spun into multi-filament yarns and knitted into flexible FR textile fabrics.nbsp; The knitted FR fabrics demonstrated a V-0 grade in the standard UL-94 testing. In the proposed Phase II effort, the FR polyamide polymer developed in the Phase I effort will be optimized to improve the FR property and scaled-up for producing close-to-skin garments for crews in future space missions.