Articles

Human Spaceflight Takes a Giant Leap

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025, and to Mars in the 2030s. While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human...

Next-Generation Infrared Technologies Solve High-Speed Automotive Testing Challenges

Product research and development on internal combustion engines, brake rotors, tires, and high-speed airbags are just a few of the areas that truly benefit...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

Choosing the Right Hardware for Testing in Harsh Environments

Testing in rugged applications often includes testing in extreme temperature ranges, which can add constraints to hardware. Cold-start engine testing, for example, uses a test cell...

NASA's Game-Changing Robotics

“Over the years, I’ve asked people, ‘If you had a robot, what would you want it to do for you?’” said Rob Ambrose, principal investigator for NASA’s Game Changing Development Program and chief of the...

Primer Stops Corrosion Without Requiring Rust Removal

NASA Technology The world is made out of bad concrete and rusty steel, and corrosion is the primary cause of deterioration of our infrastructure,” says Bob Walde, vice president of...

NASA’s Infrared Sensor Spots Near-Earth Asteroids

The Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) is part of a proposed NASA mission to find potentially hazardous asteroids. In a Q&A with Photonics & Imaging Technology, NEOCam principal...

Using Optical Simulation Tools to Design 3D Printers

High-definition digital projectors based on Texas Instruments’ DLP® technology are widely known for being used in more than 90% of the world’s digital movie theaters. However, DLP chips...

Advanced Digital Microscopes Providing Simple Solutions to Common Microscopy Issues

Thanks to a combination of high-quality optics and advanced digital imaging technology, today’s newest digital microscopes provide efficient solutions to a...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

Advances in Coating Technology Take Shape at NASA Goddard

The Contamination and Coatings Engineering Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, provides system-level support in contamination engineering and thermal...

Recycling Technology Converts Plastic Waste to Energy

NASA Technology Glenn Research Center has always been in the business of perfecting engines. During World War II, the center, then called the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory, developed a...

Simplified Machine Design Approach for Optimal Servomotor Control

An often asked question from industrial machine builders or integrators is how they can effectively design or implement the conversion of a machine with servo technology to meet...

NASA Proxy Maps Reveal Earthquake Damage

On April 25, 2015, a magnitude - 7.8 earthquake caused widespread building damage in central Nepal. The Italian Space Agency’s COSMO-SkyMed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite acquired data over...

Inertial Sensors Get in the Driver’s Seat

Two decades have passed since automotive manufacturers began using the first microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer to measure strong acceleration and trigger the deployment of airbags...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

Making Sense from Sensors: How to Build a Sensor Fusion Engine

The presence of more than 1 billion sensor-rich smartphones and the intense interest surrounding the Internet of Things has drawn wide attention to all the potential and...

The Future of Exploration Starts With 3D Printing

Last year, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, tested an additive manufacturing process that is being used to make some of the parts for NASA’s new rocket,...

3D Imaging Reveals Battery Degradation in Real Time

Using sophisticated 3D imaging, a team at University College London, The European Synchrotron (ESRF), University of Manchester, Harwell Oxford, Oregon State University, and the National...

Filtering in Machine Vision

There are many different types of filters in machine vision that can be utilized to improve or change the image of the object under inspection. It is important to understand the different technologies behind the...

Space Blanket-Inspired Cases Protect Expensive Devices

NASA Technology Nick Blanton spends a lot of time outdoors, skiing in the winter months and hiking when the weather’s warm. All of this takes a toll on his electronic gadgets, which are...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

NASA Drives Automotive Innovation

Standards for Comfortable Seats In the beginning, safety trumped comfort in spacecraft designs for human space travel. Early space capsules were small and had a seat-driven design in which most of the flight...

Software Helps Restore Fire-Ravaged Habitats

NASA Technology Idaho is a nature-lover’s dream. Forests there blanket swaths of terrain, from the glassy lake regions of the northern Panhandle to the famous trout-fishing streams of the...

Robots and Humans - Let the Collaboration Begin

A collaborative robot is essentially an industrial robot with additional safety capabilities. These safety features include: Safety-rated monitored stop (zero speed limiting) Speed and...

Advanced Capabilities of PXI-Based Semiconductor Test Systems

The ongoing challenge for today’s semiconductor test engineers is to identify and create new test solutions that can offer significantly lower test costs as well as address the...

Calibration Requirements for Testing Coupling-Decoupling Networks

Coupling-Decoupling Networks (CDNs) are the unglamorous workhorses that get “hitched up” to an impulse generator in order to perform impulse testing on powered equipment. As...

NASA Monitoring Technologies Shake Up Earthquake Prediction

The seconds to minutes of advance warning of an earthquake can allow people and systems to take actions to protect life and property from destructive shaking. Earthquake early warning...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...