Question: What would happen to thermite in space

Columbus Operations answered on 11 Mar 2016:

I’m sorry to say that I actually don’t know the answer to this! But questions like yours are the motivations behind all of the scientific research that we do on the ISS. The conditions in space are obviously very different from those that we experience here on Earth. This means that materials and chemical processes can behave in really different ways. In the Columbus module we have many scientific experiments to research the behaviour of materials, fluids, and organic substances in space. In the US ‘Destiny’ laboratory module of the ISS there is an entire experiment rack dedicated to investigating combustion processes (it’s called the ‘Combustion Integrated Rack’). I’m not a chemist so I can’t really speculate on how the thermite reaction would behave in microgravity and/or vacuum conditions. But what I can say is that we’re really careful about the kind of experiments which are done on board the ISS. The safety of the crew always comes first! So the fact that a thermite can get pretty hot is something which we would think a LOT about before deciding to perform any experiments like that on-board the ISS.

Katie