Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Air Treatment Systems Break Down Pollutants, Germs

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Semiconductor Research Leads to Revolution in Dental Care

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Medical-Grade Smartwatch Can Monitor Astronauts, Patients

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...

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...

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...

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Space Radiation Research Fights Cancer on Earth

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

NASA Research Illuminates Medical Uses of Light

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,...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Electrical Body Signals Help Researchers Restore Movement and More

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

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Device for Analyzing Deep Space Could Detect Tumors, Air Particles

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

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Clean Air Tech for Spacecraft Helps Fight Pandemic

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...

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Artificial Intelligence for Astronauts Monitors Patients at Home

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...

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Low-Outgassing, Space-Grade Coatings Cover Electronics, Sensors, Pacemakers

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Variable-Gravity Device Enables Medical, Pharmaceutical Research

NASA Technology

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

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Fiber-Optic “Nerves” Enable Sensitive Surgery Tools

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...

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Space Station Research Platform Paves the Way for Zero-G Manufacturing

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Remote Monitoring Promotes Community Health beyond Hospitals

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Fluorescent Paints Spot DNA Damage from Radiation, Gene Editing

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Miniature Positioner Focuses Lenses with Precision

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...

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Biometric Sensor Tracks Vital Signs for Health

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...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Unique Polymer Finds Widespread Use in Heart Devices

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...

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...

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...

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...