Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Humanoid Robots Assist Assembly Lines

A humanoid robot from Austin, Texas-based Apptronik is the result of numerous collaborations with Johnson Space Center, including SBIR contracts. The Apollo robot is currently working in...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Mission: Home

After 3D printing a model Martian habitat at Johnson Space Center, ICON built a 100-home community outside of Austin, Texas, where the company is headquartered.

A Texas neighborhood of 100 brand-new curvy-walled...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

From Pluto to Farms and Pharmaceuticals

A filter technology used in numerous NASA missions, including Goddard Space Flight Center’s Pluto-exploring New Horizons, is at the heart of Chandler, Arizona-based VIAVI Solutions’...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Lunar Gardening Device Grows Health, Beauty Ingredients

Barbara Belvisi founded Interstellar Lab, whose U.S. office is in Merritt Island, Florida, while consulting with experts at Ames Research Center. Her early designs became the...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Keeping Cool, Containing Flame

Funding from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation helped launch the Oros outdoor clothing line that incorporates aerogel insulation. Lessons about aerogel created by Kennedy Space Center led to a new...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Beat the ‘Heet’ at 400,000 Feet

Because NASA is always looking for ways to improve thermal insulation, Langley Research Center has entered into multiple SBIRs with the company Heetshield, which then developed insulation for...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

A Planetary Sensor’s Earthly Applications

Technology supported by NASA for identifying planetary conditions is used on Earth by frackers and others. The photodiodes from Greenbelt, Maryland-based CoolCAD Electronics Inc. have...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

3D Printable Alloy Can Take the Heat

GRX-810, a new alloy developed by Glenn Research Center, will make lightweight, durable metal parts needed for space travel. Under a co-exclusive license for NASA’s patented alloy, Elementum 3D...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Teaching an Old New Tricks

In the 1960s, Langley Research Center oversaw a comprehensive investigation of the shape memory alloy nitinol, research that was foundational to nitonol products from Metalwerks, including a new...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Lunar Lattices and Their Earthly Impact

Winning a 3D Printed Habitat Challenge at Marshall Space Flight Center and outfitting a model lunar habitat have helped Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Branch Technology evolve its signature...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Instant Innovation for Plastic Products

A Kennedy Space Center technologist figured out how to infuse plastics with aerogel to make them better insulators. It also made them more fire-resistant, water-repellant, sound-damping,...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

NASA Hydrogen History Informs World’s Hydrogen Future

CB&I of The Woodlands, Texas, built the world’s largest liquid hydrogen tank at Kennedy Space Center to support Artemis launches. The experience with new construction...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Out-of-This-World Organs

Heart tissue, knee cartilage, and pharmaceutical crystals have been cultivated in space using Jacksonville, Florida-based Redwire’s ADSEP shelving unit, which was developed for and has been improved by...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Measuring Buzz, Hum, and Rattle

Collecting flight test noise data or chirps from insects in a field is as simple as laying out a wireless microphone system. Interdisciplinary Consulting Corp. of Gainesville, Florida, worked with...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

3D Printed Engines Propel Next Industrial Revolution

Tipping Point funding and an Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity, both from Marshall Space Flight Center, helped Erie, Colorado-based Elementum 3D refine its 3D printable...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Dust-Powered 3D Printing

AI SpaceFactory sells 3D Printers informed by its work on Marshall Space Flight Center’s Centennial Challenge, which the Secaucus, New Jersey company won with print material containing crushed basalt...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Innovation Comes Out of the Wool Work

To ensure firefighting equipment would have enough filtration to keep astronauts safe on the Orion spacecraft, Johnson Space Center turned to Auckland, New Zealand-based Lanaco to make improved...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

NASA ‘RAMPT’ Up 3D Printed Engine Size

Marshall Space Flight Center used Game Changing Development funding to work with RPM Innovations (RPMI) of Rapid City, South Dakota, on scaling up 3D printed engines. The work refined...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Spraying for Food Safety

Kennedy Space Center consulted with industry to develop a new electrostatic spraying nozzle to water plants in the weightless environment of space. Electrostatic Spraying Systems of Watkinsville, Georgia,...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

From Magnetic Rocket Fuel to Semiconductors

A liquid with magnetic properties developed by NASA in the 1960s was the basis for ferrofluids now sold by MAGRON, a company in Ansan, South Korea, whose customers use them in...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Pumping Out State-of-the-Art Design

Decades of collaboration on multiple SBIR contracts gave Concepts NREC LLC extensive access to NASA rocket engine expertise. The White River Junction, Vermont-based company incorporates Marshall...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Making the Most of Meticulous Measurements

When NASA needed to make sure telescope mirrors were perfectly flat, 4D Technology of Tucson, Arizona, was contracted to develop measuring instruments that could ensure the James Webb Space...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

NASA Ingredients for Industrial Expedience

When Johnson Space Center wanted to explore ways of cooking food for long term habitation in deep space, Induction Food Systems Inc. of Durham, North Carolina received Small Business...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Ion Thrusters Keep Satellites Going and Going

When Orbion Space Technology Inc. of Houghton, Michigan, wanted to bring high-efficiency ion thrusters to the commercial satellite industry, the company entered into agreements with...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Webb Telescope Made Simulation Software Better

Developers of the James Webb Space Telescope relied heavily on simulation software, work that helped advance the whole field of integrated modeling. In particular, the Goddard Space...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

NASA’s Moon Shot Launched Commercial Fuel Cell Industry

The first practical fuel cells were developed for Johnson Space Center in preparation for NASA’s Apollo missions because batteries would have weighed too much. The group...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Rocket Manufacturing Meets Science Friction

SBIR funding from Langley Research Center let a team from Aeroprobe Corporation try out additive friction stir deposition, a new method for 3D printing with metal. The work demonstrated...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Ultrasonic Inspections Protect Astronauts, Boat Owners

Aerospace Corporation spent two years working under funding from Langley Research Center to develop an ultrasonic scanner capable of detecting subsurface defects in the Orion...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Creating With Carbon

By combining the first variety of X-ray tubes ever available with a carbon-based nanotube innovation born just over a decade ago, Applied Nanotech, Inc., is helping to put the nanotechnology field on the map with...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Cloning Metal Parts for Space and Earth

Physics-based computer modeling software makes it possible to build, examine, and test virtual 3D-printed metal parts that meet the exacting standards of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory....