Health and Medicine

NASA Spinoff

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Temperature-Regulating Fabrics Keep Babies Comfortable

NASA Technology

NASA’s astronauts are among the world’s most capable, resourceful, and highly trained individuals. Now technology originally created to keep them comfortable in space is available to the population’s most helpless and inexperienced members—babies.

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Space-Based Bone Scanner Expands Medical Research

NASA Technology

What happens to bones after months in microgravity? The answers are of keen interest to researchers, who can use the information to offer new insights into healthcare on the ground.

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Tool Kit Simplifies Development of High-Affinity Molecules

NASA Technology

As NASA sets its sights on long-duration missions deeper into the solar system, including a planned mission to Mars, astronauts will need access to...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Space-Ready Spectrometer Offers Terrestrial Advantages

NASA Technology

In the 1990s, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Joy Crisp oversaw an effort to get a cutting-edge, ruggedized, lightweight spectrometer on a lander to...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Pressure Garments Save New Mothers’ Lives

NASA Technology

In 1969 NASA Ames Research Center received an unusual call for help: a local woman who had given birth continued to experience abdominal bleeding weeks later despite...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Rodent Research Contributes to Osteoporosis Treatments

NASA Technology

Astronauts know their bodies will be tested during time spent on the International Space Station (ISS), from the multiple sunrises and sunsets per day...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Sterilizing Fogger Cleans Ambulances with a Breeze

NASA Technology

When paramedics come racing into a home, the last thing anybody is worrying about is where the ambulance was earlier that morning. But traces of those earlier...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Biometric Sensors Optimize Workouts

NASA Technology

What if, as a pilot was pulling heavy G-forces and headed toward a blackout, a voice in his or her ear said, “Pull out of the turn”? What if ground control had a screen with...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Optimized Imager Tracks Cancer, Stem Cells in Medical Research

NASA Technology

After earning his doctorate, Debashish Roy set about creating a business from the biological imaging device he’d helped invent as a graduate...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Weightless “Weight”-Lifting Builds Muscle on Earth

NASA Technology

NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid spent hundreds of hours exercising during her 188-day stay on the Russian space station Mir in 1996. Although it was her least...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Virtual Therapist Offers Out-of-This-World Depression Treatment

NASA Technology

Imagine being stuck in a small space with just a few coworkers for months at a time. Each person’s work is crucial to the success—even the...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Compact Spectrometers Unveil Clues to Diagnose Cancer

NASA Technology

It may seem hard to remember now, with thousands of planets of various types and sizes discovered throughout the galaxy, but back in the 1990s, the field of...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Fluorescent Diagnostic Test Readers Offer Fast, Low-Cost Results

NASA Technology

NASA astronauts are screened for sound health, among a slew of other requirements, but no one is invulnerable, especially in space. For reasons not...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Cooling Garments Find New Medical, Athletic, and Industrial Uses

NASA Technology

When Bill Elkins started working on liquid cooling garments to keep early astronauts cool, no one saw a use for them beyond maintaining thermal...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Mini Heat Pipes Wick Away Heat in Brain Surgery

NASA Technology

Neurosurgery is one of those things where you want the tools to be as precise and reliable as possible. One important tool of the trade, bipolar forceps, uses...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Active Pixel Sensors Lead Dental Imagery into the Digital Age

NASA Technology

They’re in your cell phone camera and probably in your handheld digital camera, but they may have been in your dentist’s X-ray machine first:...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Space Grant Research Launches Rehabilitation Chair

NASA Technology

A stay on the International Space Station is no vacation. During a visit to the orbiting National Laboratory, astronauts divide their time among a variety of...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Liquid Cooling Technology Increases Exercise Efficiency

NASA Technology

The human body in space is as vulnerable as a fish out of water. Beyond a spacecraft’s protective environment, there is no oxygen to breathe and nothing to...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Algae-Derived Dietary Ingredients Nourish Animals

NASA Technology

Algae-based food ingredients pioneered by NASA-sponsored research in the early 1980s revolutionized the infant formula industry a decade later and have...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Audio App Brings a Better Night's Sleep

NASA Technology

With demanding schedules, a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes, and extremely noisy surroundings, it’s understandable why many astronauts onboard the International Space...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Vision Trainer Teaches Focusing Techniques at Home

NASA Technology

Inventions often find unintended uses. The first mechanical clocks in Europe were intended to track the motions of celestial bodies and found their original...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

3D Endoscope to Boost Safety, Cut Costs of Surgery

NASA Technology

“A lot of things are not easy to solve when you’re trying to break through a new technology right from the get-go,” says Harish Manohara, supervisor of the...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Patient Simulators Train Emergency Caregivers

NASA Technology

Medical training is one of the most important aspects of preparing astronauts for space. Every crewmember must become proficient in basic emergency skills, such as...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Miniaturized, Portable Sensors Monitor Metabolic Health

NASA Technology

On Earth, gravity might weigh you down, but it also builds you up. For astronauts working in space for long durations, the weightless environment can cause a...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Solar Refrigerators Store Life-Saving Vaccines

NASA Technology

Over the years, NASA has advanced photovoltaic (PV) technology in order to advance many of its missions. This renewable source of energy is produced when certain...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Handheld Diagnostic Device Delivers Quick Medical Readings

NASA Technology

In a 1962 speech, President John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Innovative Software Tools Measure Behavioral Alertness

NASA Technology

For astronauts working aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in low-Earth orbit, getting adequate sleep is a challenge. For one, there’s that...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Monitors Enable Medication Management in Patients’ Homes

NASA Technology

To build a small and mobile monitoring and processing system for use onboard the station to capture, store, and transmit sensor data about astronauts back...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Water Treatment Technologies Inspire Healthy Beverages

NASA Technology

If you wandered the halls of Johnson Space Center in the mid-1990s, you might have run across Mike Johnson lugging a large container of freshly collected urine down to the lab. There, Johnson assisted the scientists who were tasked with developing...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Dietary Formulas Fortify Antioxidant Supplements

NASA Technology

The astronaut’s life and work is so different from our own daily experiences that it’s easy to forget that astronauts are people, too. Just like everyone else, astronauts have basic nutritional needs—such as five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables...

NASA Spinoff