Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Cryofuels Come Under Pressure

NASA needs reliable cryofuel tanks for use in space, and the airline industry wants them to replace fossil fuels. SBIR funding from Marshall Space Flight Center for Tullahoma, Tennessee-based...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Earth’s Twin Helps with Extreme Electronics

An all-in-one, single-board computer module can withstand 900ºF conditions without a cooling system thanks to Glenn Research Center expertise in extreme-temperature technology. SBIR...

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....

Spinoff: Trending

NASA’s VITAL Contribution to Global Pandemic Relief

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed a ventilator that could be produced quickly and cheaply. This design has...

Spinoff: Trending

A High-Tech Farmer’s Almanac for Everyone

In order to make vast amounts of satellite data accessible to anyone, Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center moved data into the cloud, developed search algorithms, and...

Spinoff: Trending

The View from Space Keeps Getting Better

For half a century, NASA-built Landsat satellites have been recording Earth’s surface, gathering science-grade imagery in various spectral bands. That data yields valuable information for...

Spinoff: Trending

An Electronic Traffic Monitor for Airports

A collaboration between Ames Research Center, the Federal Aviation Administration, American Airlines Inc., Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and Southwest Airlines Co. resulted in a...

Spinoff: Trending

Weather Forecasters Adopt NASA’s ‘Occult’ Science

Decades ago, NASA invented radio occultation, a technique that used radio waves to study the atmospheres of other planets. Now the proliferation of navigation satellites in...

Spinoff: Trending

Shuttle-Analysis Software Improves Airplane, Turbine Safety

Ensuring safety for astronauts on the world’s first reusable spacecraft required NASA’s space shuttle engineers to take novel approaches when calculating the...

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: Transportation

Test Rockets Prepare for Distant Landings

Rocket-powered vehicle for testing lander navigation systems supports space companies

How can a spacecraft land itself on alien terrain? NASA needed a better answer than...

Spinoff: Transportation

Swinging the HAMR

From search-and-rescue operations to surveying farmland, remotely operated aircraft have become important to several industries. However, current multi-rotor designs have one drawback: endurance. Driving four or...

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

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

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

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

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: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Forecasting Saharan Dust to Minimize Health Risks

Last summer, wind carried nearly 24 tons of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa across the Atlantic Ocean, to North and South America, hitting islands in the Caribbean Sea...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

NASA-Born Software Helps Weather Forecasting Around the Globe

The 2020 hurricane season was one of the most active on record, and 2021’s is shaping up to be as well, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Metallic Glass Gears Up for ‘Cobots,’ Coatings, and More

Where are the robot assistants we were promised?

For all the space that robots have occupied in the popular imagination for the last hundred years – and...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Some Engineering Is Only Skin Deep

Ability to finish surfaces of 3D-printed superalloys improves performance for engines, industry

Recent advances in 3D printing with metals are making it an increasingly...

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.

Spinoff: Transportation

NASA Helps Private Lander Shoot for the Moon

Autonomous robots building the shelters and other structures astronauts need before they even land is an exciting idea, but is it practical? Testing such a venture on Earth won’t...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Stay Safe with Battery Testing for Space

NASA battery safety exams influence commercial product testing

Battery safety is incredibly important in space due to the risk of thermal runaway, a reaction where...

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

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

‘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 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

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: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Measuring Moon Dust to Fight Air Pollution

Moon dust isn’t like the stuff that collects on a bookshelf or on tables – it’s ubiquitous and abrasive, and it clings to everything. It’s so bad that it even broke the vacuum NASA...