NASA Spinoff

Health and Medicine

Fresh-Aire UV of Jupiter, Florida, developed a line of air purifiers that break down organic contaminants with a process called photocatalytic oxidation (PCO). The company gets its...

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Research into growing crystals for electronics at NASA’s short-lived Electronics Research Center led to an agency patent for repairing teeth by growing crystals of...

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A research consortium backed by Johnson Space Center funded the development of a wearable device that could monitor the vital signs and activities of astronauts in space or...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Cutting the Knee Surgery Cord

The first FDA-cleared wireless arthroscopic camera for minimally invasive knee surgeries and other orthopedic procedures got early support from NASA through the Adopt a City program, which enabled Glenn...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Concentrating on Microbes

SBIR funding for InnovaPrep LLC of Drexel, Missouri, led to a bioconcentration system for testing air and water quality on the space station and improved the company’s commercial technology. The funding...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Synthetic DNA Diagnoses COVID, Cancer

Synthetic DNA used to diagnose diseases such as COVID, hepatitis, and cancer was developed by Firebird Diagnostics LLC of Alachua, Florida, with research funded in part by the NASA Astrobiology...

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Protecting astronauts from space radiation exposure is important, so Johnson Space Center funded research into using certain segments of DNA to estimate radiation damage. After it...

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Multi Radiance Medical Inc. of Solon, Ohio, builds light-therapy devices based in part on NASA-funded research. Though health benefits of exposure to certain wavelengths were known,...

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NASA has long studied the effects of weightlessness on astronauts’ muscle functioning. With support from Johnson Space Center, including SBIR contracts, Delsys...

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NASA pulls data from deep space and elsewhere using microchannel plates, devices that amplify particles or photons, making faint signals detectable. Under NASA SBIR...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Telescope Mirror Tech Improves Eye Surgery

A system for guiding LASIK eye surgery is a by-product of early research on the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors. Santa Ana, California-based Johnson & Johnson Vision’s iDesign...

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Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it became clear that the novel coronavirus was transmitted through the air, several companies realized their NASA-derived air-quality...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
From a Lightbox to Lamps

Dale Dell’Ario had a glowing box in his living room, and he wanted to share it.

Dell’Ario had retired in 2013 from a long career in medical device manufacturing, where he’d developed lighting...

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When chronic pain flares, the trip from your door to the doctor’s office can seem as difficult as getting from Earth to Mars. The same could be said for the...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Image-Analysis Software Sees Cancer in 3D

NASA Technology

Even NASA can be surprised.

The Space Agency works hard to search out surprising discoveries, of course, but it works equally hard to avoid unpleasant ones related...

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NASA Technology

You might open a window after painting a room, or let a foam mattress air out before sleeping on it so the materials can off-gas and...

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NASA Technology

Through decades of sending astronauts into space, scientists have learned much about the biological effects of weightlessness. In the absence of...

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NASA Technology

Can you make a robot feel? That was the question posed to Johnson Space Center engineer Toby Martin.

It wasn’t a heart that NASA wanted to give...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Balance Scale Predicts, Helps Prevent Falls

NASA Technology

The inside of the International Space Station is designed to give astronauts the illusion of verticality in the weightlessness of orbit. The “floors” are relatively...

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NASA Technology

Much of the research NASA does on the International Space Station is designed to better understand how to work and live in zero gravity to...

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NASA Technology

Hospital rooms are full of sensors, screens, and beeps. Those sensors send signals not just to screens in that room but down the hall to the nurse’s...

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NASA Technology

A cutting-edge technique for detecting damage to chromosomes showed enough promise for space medicine that its creators founded a company to market...

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NASA Technology

Nobody has ever directly seen dark matter or dark energy, yet physicists and astronomers observe their effects all around us. Dark matter is thought to hold...

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Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Material for Mars Makes Life-Saving Sutures

NASA Technology

Although NASA has sent many missions to Mars, nothing, so far, has ever come back. That’s something the Agency hopes to change—and it is working on the technology...

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NASA Technology

NASA monitors its astronauts in orbit 24/7, aiming both to learn new information about how human bodies adapt to microgravity as well as to keep track of their...

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NASA Technology

A material that a NASA scientist stumbled on in the early 1990s has now helped to keep hundreds of thousands of patients’ hearts beating properly all over...

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NASA Technology

NASA’s astronauts are among the world’s most capable, resourceful, and highly trained individuals. Now technology originally created to keep them...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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