Spinoff: Computer Technology

Simulation Software Optimizes High-Speed, Efficient Data Networks

NASA Technology

NASA famously uses simulation software to design spacecraft, predict satellite orbits, and train astronauts. But modeling and simulation are...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Carbon-Fiber Heat Sink Makes Batteries Safer for Electric Cars, Bikes, and More

NASA Technology

Batteries have come a long way in recent years. Lithium-ion batteries in particular are more powerful, longer-lasting, and...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Autonomous Drone Navigation System Ends Reliance on GPS

NASA Technology

Self-piloted drone traffic may be just over the horizon, metaphorically speaking, but for now, vehicles cannot legally fly beyond the operator’s line of...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Field-Scanning Drone Gives Farmers Better Data

NASA Technology

There’s a reason people talk about a “bird’s-eye view” and “as the crow flies”: flying allows access and a perspective you just can’t get with feet...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Laser Enables Precise Measurements for Weather Forecasting, Industry

NASA Technology

News of Hurricane Irma dominated forecasts for days before it made landfall in the Caribbean and then the southeastern United States in...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Freeze-Dried Foods Nourish Adventurers and the Imagination

NASA Technology

Freeze-dried food, today, is commonplace. It’s in the baby food aisle and next to the dried apricots. Hikers carry it on backwoods treks and doomsday...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Rockets, Rovers Spur New Offshore Drilling Safety Technology

NASA Technology

On the night of April 20, 2010, a flow of oil, gas, and mud erupted onto the floor of the Deepwater Horizon drilling vessel from the oil well below....

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: Transportation

Unique Sensors Will Improve Aerodynamic Design, Aircraft Performance

NASA Technology

Even after almost 150 years of wind tunnel testing, no commercial product had ever been able to directly measure the localized force that...

Spinoff: Public Safety

AirMap Guides Drones toward Widespread Use

NASA Technology

The drones are coming for us all—and that’s a good thing. While unmanned, remote-controlled, or programmed flight is not new, it is becoming increasingly...

Spinoff: Transportation

Water-Powered Engines Offer Satellite Mobility

NASA Technology

NASA has been planning for a water-powered rocket engine since the Agency’s early years. After all, water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, which have been powering...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Astronaut Experience Inspires Single-Handed Drone Flight Controller

NASA Technology

Astronaut Scott Parazynski has flown airplanes, climbed Mount Everest, and scuba-dived deep in a volcanic lake—but he says floating in space...

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: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Pulsed Laser Innovations Power Nobel-Winners’ Research

NASA Technology

When Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon, the video and his first words—transmitted across nearly 240,000 miles and broadcasted around the...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Electrostatic Discharge Training Improves Manufacturing Practices

NASA Technology

Everybody has felt it from time to time: that sharp jolt of electric shock you get when you walk across a rug and touch a doorknob.

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Swarming Technology Lets Drones Work as a Team

NASA Technology

Even before much-anticipated autonomous drones finally take to the sky, the U.S. airspace is saturated, says now-retired Langley Research Center scientist Kennie...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Metallic Glass Coatings Improve Power Plant, Oil Rig Productivity

NASA Technology

A rover can be equipped with the most state-of-the-art scientific instruments NASA engineers can devise, but if the wheel breaks, that’s going...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Tiny Pulsed Lasers Have Medical, Industrial, Military, Environmental Applications

NASA Technology

On the outside, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover will look nearly identical to the 2011-launched Curiosity rover. But inside, engineers...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Wrapped Tanks Cut Weight on Everything from Buses to Paintball Guns

NASA Technology

What do naval anti-missile guns, infant incubators, the Phoenix Mars lander, and high-end paintball guns have in common? All these...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Methane Detector Sniffs Out Leaks

NASA Technology

Methane is everywhere on Earth, for better and for worse. Among other things, it’s the main ingredient in the natural gas that powers heating, cooking, and electricity. It’s...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

IonCCD Enables Fast, Reliable, Inexpensive Mass Spectrometry

NASA Technology

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has a long history of pioneering the use of the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which it used to build some of...

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: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Vibration Isolator Steadies Optics for Telescopes

NASA Technology

Anybody who has ever tried to hold a camera steady for a long exposure in low light knows exactly what inevitably happens: the camera shakes, and the image blurs....

Spinoff: Transportation

Shuttle Tire Sensors Warn Drivers of Flat Tires

NASA Technology

How many people can think of a time when they got to their destination only to realize one of their car tires was dangerously low on air? Or they heard an ominous...

Spinoff: Transportation

Super-Accurate Atomic Clocks Could Aid in Navigation, Communication

NASA Technology

Do you know what time it is?

Knowing the answer—being able to measure time accurately and consistently—is fundamental to advanced...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Detailed Spectrometry Makes Dangerous-Materials Testing Safer

NASA Technology

In Chris McKay’s search for signs of life on other worlds, some of the strongest clues can be found by identifying isotopes.

The Ames...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Electrified Bacteria Clean Wastewater, Generate Power

NASA Technology

NASA recently sent into space organisms that might sound like they came from space to begin with—microbes that can essentially breathe electricity.

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: Transportation

Battery Innovations Power All-Electric Aircraft

NASA Technology

The X-planes, experimental aircraft built by NASA and the military, started out by breaking the sound barrier in 1947 and have been pushing through invisible...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Light Research Aids Slumber

NASA Technology

In the age of smartphones and e-readers, with touchscreens and LED displays seemingly on every appliance and everywhere else, it has also become quite commonplace to talk about the...