NASA Spinoff
Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Astronaut Experience Inspires Single-Handed Drone Flight Controller
NASA Technology
Astronaut Scott Parazynski has flown airplanes, climbed Mount Everest, and scuba-dived deep in a volcanic lake—but he says floating in space...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Freeze-Dried Foods Nourish Adventurers and the Imagination
NASA Technology
Freeze-dried food, today, is commonplace. It’s in the baby food aisle and next to the dried apricots. Hikers carry it on backwoods treks and doomsday...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Carbon-Fiber Heat Sink Makes Batteries Safer for Electric Cars, Bikes, and More
NASA Technology
Batteries have come a long way in recent years. Lithium-ion batteries in particular are more powerful, longer-lasting, and...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Spacesuit Insulation Protects Personal Devices
NASA Technology
Protecting astronauts from the extreme temperatures of space while they explore the Moon or repair the exterior of the International Space Station requires a suit...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Nanotechnology Repairs Engine Damage in Cars
NASA Technology
That spot of oil on the garage floor dripping from your engine indicates a problem. It’s so small that you put off going to the mechanic, until you hear a new noise...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Zero-Gravity Body Posture Influences Acupressure Massage Chair
NASA Technology
Most people don’t think about how easy it is to sit behind a desk or go through a door—for them, it’s automatic. But sitting horizontally at a...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Bowflex System Spurs Revolution in Home Fitness
NASA Technology
The commercials were once ubiquitous, and the machines soon appeared in spare rooms and garages across the country. The Bowflex Revolution was a phenomenon of the...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Spacesuit Air Filters Eliminate Household Pet Odors
NASA Technology
In a surprising turn, NASA-backed research on new spacesuit technology could improve air quality in the homes of pet owners, as well as keep cars smelling fresh...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
NASA Research Sends Video Game Players on a Journey to Mars
NASA Technology
What would it be like to venture to another planet? To kick up red dirt on Mars and crawl through the lava tubes that wind beneath the surface? To build...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Brainwaves Reveal Student Engagement, Operate Household Objects
NASA Technology
When we talk about operating “on autopilot,” we usually mean acting with little thought or effort, often resulting in error. It turns out actual...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Memory Foam Supports and Shapes in Women’s Apparel
NASA Technology
If there’s one NASA spinoff that is almost guaranteed to have touched your life, it is memory foam. Even traditional spring mattresses typically have a layer...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Rocket Design Leads to Turbo-Charged Air Purifier
NASA Technology
The founders of Wynd, a start-up that makes personal air purifiers, didn’t particularly have space exploration on the brain when they built their prototype. But...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
NASA Plant Research Offers a Breath of Fresh Air
NASA Technology
Try to name sources of air pollution. Most likely your first thoughts would be things like exhaust from burning coal or driving a car. But, perhaps...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Light Research Aids Slumber
NASA Technology
In the age of smartphones and e-readers, with touchscreens and LED displays seemingly on every appliance and everywhere else, it has also become quite commonplace to talk about the...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Apollo 11 History Archive Helps Virtual Reality Program Come to Life
NASA Technology
Imagine yourself in the cramped cockpit of the Apollo spacecraft heading to the moon. Look around to see Earth out one window and stars lighting...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Light-Induced Oxidation Cleans Air, Surfaces, Clothes
NASA Technology
In late 2015 and early 2016, while Southern California Gas workers struggled for months to stop a natural gas leak from a well at Aliso Canyon in Los Angeles,...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Ferrofluid Technology Becomes a Magnet for Pioneering Artists
NASA Technology
In 2008, when Nikola Ilic came across an online video of moving ferrofluid sculptures by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama, with black liquid rising into...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
The Martian Garden Recreates Red Planet’s Surface
NASA Technology
After the Phoenix lander settled into the northern polar region of Mars in 2008, its operators discovered that icy soil scraped from the planet’s surface was...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Aerogel Insulation Makes Thinner, Warmer Outerwear
NASA Technology
When Michael Markesbery, future cofounder of Oros, climbed the tallest mountain in the Swiss Alps with friends, he was bundled up with so many bulky layers he...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Space-Grade Insulation Keeps Beer Colder on Earth
NASA Technology
A class of insulation invented to help NASA with a range of daunting tasks, from storing liquid hydrogen or helium to insulating spacecraft and keeping astronauts...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
High-Efficiency LEDs Grow Crops, Stimulate Alertness
NASA Technology
NASA harnesses the power of light for purposes as varied as laser communications, 3D mapping of land surfaces, and spectroscopy to determine the composition of...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Paired Sleep Tracker, Light Therapy Tools Retrain Circadian Rhythms
NASA Technology
Lack of sleep could be costing the U.S. economy around $411 billion a year, according to a 2016 estimate by the RAND Corporation. That same year,...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
CMOS Sensors Enable Phone Cameras, HD Video
NASA Technology
“People told me, ‘You’re an idiot to work on this,’” Eric Fossum recalls of his early experiments with what was at the time an alternate form of digital image...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Novel Threading Enables New Approach to Golf Clubs
NASA Technology
NASA scientists routinely pioneer advances in cutting-edge fields like lasers and computer chips, but sometimes it’s the innovations they make in simple...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Blue-Light-Cancelling Lens Gives Skiers a Clearer View
NASA Technology
Of all the colors the human eye is capable of seeing, it is particularly sensitive to blues and greens, which comprise the middle wavelengths of the visible...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Professional Development Program Gets Bird’s-Eye View of Wineries
NASA Technology
Virginia might not yet rival California when it comes to wine production, but a growing number of wineries and vintners are cropping up across...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Rechargeable Hearing Aid Batteries Draw from NASA Research
NASA Technology
We often imagine that inventions are born whole: Thomas Edison creates the incandescent light bulb and lights up Christie Street in Menlo Park on New...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Carbon Nanotube Resin Shores Up Boats, Bikes
NASA Technology
At 100 times the strength of steel and just one-sixth the weight, it is easy to see why engineers, and not just at NASA, were immediately excited by the potential in...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Large-Scale 3D Printer Brings Manufacturing to the Masses
NASA Technology
When the nearest Home Depot is out of reach and Amazon.com doesn’t deliver, finding spare parts or a new tool can be a challenge. That can be true...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
NODE+ Platform Integrates Sensors with Smartphones
NASA Technology
In 2007, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a call for a sensor that could equip a smartphone with the ability to detect dangerous gases and...