Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Toxin-Eating Plants

A rating system to identify which houseplants remove specific indoor toxins from the air started with NASA plant research performed at Stennis Space Center. London-based Plant Drop expanded that research into an...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Cosmic Experiments Make Cosmetic Nutrients

The Rotary Cell Culture System invented by researchers at Johnson Space Center lets cells grow faster and healthier than they would in a dish. Brand Labs USA of Fort Lauderdale, Florida,...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Folding NASA Experience into an Origamist’s Toolkit

While working on optical computing and similar technology in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Robert Lang learned a mathematical technique that became key to his math-based...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Home-Grown Housing

Growing lunar and Martian habitats from mushrooms requires a special process, so Ames Research Center used NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funding to create and test a growth system. It’s been adapted...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Flipping NASA Tech and Sticking the Landing

Looking for a reliable method of adhesion for its product that lets a phone stick almost anywhere, Flipstik of St. Louis, Missouri, used published research into robotic grippers conducted...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA and Education Make Quite the Pear

To further its educational content offerings, Pear Deck of El Segundo, California, partnered with NASA Headquarters’ Office of STEM Engagement to consult agency technology experts and build...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Temperature-Regulating Clothing Additive Heats Up

A highly emissive coating that NASA invented to protect the heat shield on a planned spaceplane in the 1990s was licensed and turned into the Emisshield product line. Now it’s been...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Keeping Beds in the Goldilocks Zone

Using his former experience as an engineer working on spacesuit environmental control systems, the founder of Bedjet LLC of Newport, Rhode Island, designed a cooling system to keep each side of...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Space-Saving Exploration

Putting the “fun” into functional campers is what Taxa Outdoors Inc. of Houston does using the know-how of a former NASA employee. Design principles developed at Johnson Space Center for living quarters...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Eco-Friendly Bio Breaks

American Innotek Inc. took a polymer utilized in undergarments developed at Johnson Space Center to manage human waste on spacewalks and incorporated it into a bag for use on the go. Sold under the brand...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

From Space to Your Face

A bacterium so resilient it survived NASA’s efforts to sanitize Mars-bound spacecraft is now the basis for a skincare ingredient that boosts SPF in sunscreen and provides antiaging properties in face cream....

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Fixing ‘Thermal Incompatibility’ in the Bedroom

In the 1980s, Johnson Space Center explored using phase-change materials use in spacesuits. Funding via a Small Business Innovation Research contract resulted in a commercial...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Helps Serve Yellowstone Fungi for Breakfast

A microbe found in Yellowstone National Park during NASA-funded research is now the basis of a fungal protein from which Chicago-based Nature’s Fynd produces meat-alternative...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

The Science of the Perfect Cup for Coffee

When Johnson Space Center wanted to upgrade the cooling system in astronaut space suits, it funded research into the best approach. A non-toxic material proposed as an alternative for...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Feeling Hot, Staying Cool

Using a temperature-controlling material developed in part under an SBIR from Johnson Space Center for spacesuit gloves, Fifty One of London is making clothes to alleviate the symptoms of...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

'Reflecting' on Life's Daily Challenges

Hema Nambiar wants you to ask why her start-up company is called 13-One. There’s a story behind the name, one that culminates with Nambiar and more than 5,000 other women massed in New...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Space Pens, Pencils, and How NASA Takes Notes in Space

The Space Pen has captured the American imagination in more ways than one. It’s appeared repeatedly in pop culture and even worked as a plot device in a "Seinfeld" episode...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Lighting in a Bottle

John Glenn’s first trip into Earth orbit lasted just under five hours, but today astronauts regularly stay six months or longer on the International Space Station. Experiencing over a dozen sunrises and...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Safely Detoxifying Soil and Groundwater with NASA Technology

At 5:12 a.m. on Sept. 28, 1982, a train derailed near Livingston, Louisiana, waking residents nearby to the sound of explosions and raging fires. What the residents...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Helps Drones Take Flight

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, amid stay-at-home orders, social distancing requirements, and uncertainty about how COVID-19 spread, some residents of San Mateo and Contra Costa counties in...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Research Launches a New Generation of Indoor Farming

The United Nations predicts Earth will have to feed another 2.3 billion people by the year 2050, with most concentrated in urban centers far from farmland. Current...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

From Spacesuits to Racing Suits

Technology developed for space has turned up in cars for years. From space shuttle tire engineering ending up in road tires to zero-gravity body posture studies helping make comfy car seats, decades of...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Keeping Warmer in the Great Outdoors

Not everyone would celebrate the new year camping out in the Rocky Mountains during some of the longest, coldest nights of the winter. But that’s how Jon Rosenberg and his wife rang in 2018,...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

‘Positive Energy’ Captures Contaminants

The carbon-based compound in Aquaspace water filters started out more than 35 years ago in Mike Pedersen’s basement, with a stack of NASA research. Now the filters have appeared in the White...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Space-Age Water Purification Anywhere on Earth

Piush Soni didn’t think much about clean drinking water until it became hard to find.

As a gemologist spending long periods in African jungles, he realized he wasn’t the...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Investment in Small Businesses Helps Both Thrive

It’s as true in tech as it is in ancient fables: the little guys can get things done. A dehydrated gel to keep your drinks cool, a cooling system for supercomputers and a...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Hot Water on Demand

The worst part of any shower, outside of getting soap in your eyes, is probably getting unexpectedly blasted with cold water. Traditional home water heaters mean you have to wait for the right temperature to come...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Helps Optimize Air Purifiers with Modeling Expertise

Whether trapping microscopic germs or an abundance of pet hair, air filters help homes and offices alike maintain a clean environment. With any technology, research and...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Taking Out the Trash, NASA-Style

The space station doesn’t have curb-side trash pickup. Nor does it have a local landfill or recycling plant. What it does have is access to a naturally efficient incinerator – Earth’s...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

In the Right Hands, NASA Satellite Data and Analysis Make Earth Better

The number of illegal gold mines in the Amazon is increasing so fast that activists have turned to satellite imagery to identify them. Still, with thousands of...