NASA Spinoff
Topics:
Spinoff: Transportation
Hydraulic Carts Streamline Structural Tests for Aircraft
NASA Technology
Facilities for mechanical loads testing of aircraft and spacecraft are often jungles of cables, wiring, and hoses.
Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Fluorescent Diagnostic Test Readers Offer Fast, Low-Cost Results
NASA Technology
NASA astronauts are screened for sound health, among a slew of other requirements, but no one is invulnerable, especially in space. For reasons...
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
Cooling Garments Find New Medical, Athletic, and Industrial Uses
NASA Technology
When Bill Elkins started working on liquid cooling garments to keep early astronauts cool, no one saw a use for them beyond maintaining thermal...
Spinoff: Health and Medicine
Mini Heat Pipes Wick Away Heat in Brain Surgery
NASA Technology
Neurosurgery is one of those things where you want the tools to be as precise and reliable as possible. One important tool of the trade, bipolar forceps, uses...
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
Active Pixel Sensors Lead Dental Imagery into the Digital Age
NASA Technology
They’re in your cell phone camera and probably in your handheld digital camera, but they may have been in your dentist’s X-ray machine first:...
Spinoff: Transportation
CO2 Sensors Monitor Vehicle Emissions from Above
NASA Technology
Life on Earth is surrounded by, and dependent on, carbon dioxide (CO2). Plants need it for photosynthesis; people and animals exhale it; industry and...
Spinoff: Transportation
Orion Parachute Innovations Carry Commercial Rockets Back to Earth
NASA Technology
No human venture into space is a success until craft and crew have safely returned to Earth.
With their familiar orange and white...
Spinoff: Transportation
Reconfigurable Radio Tracks Flights Worldwide
NASA Technology
When Malaysia Air Flight 370 disappeared somewhere over the Indian Ocean in 2014, it had flown far beyond radar range. Under a new space-based air tracking system, no...
Spinoff: Transportation
Software Opens Computational Fluid Dynamics to the Uninitiated
NASA Technology
Sukra Helitek Inc.’s simplified, user-friendly computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package began with Ganesh Rajagopalan essentially trying...
Spinoff: Transportation
Design Software Shapes Future Sonic Booms
NASA Technology
It’s been more than 70 years since an airplane first broke the sound barrier, and yet supersonic flights remain mostly out of reach for civilian passengers, in large...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Rocket Technology Stops Shaking in Its Tracks
NASA Technology
Rocket launches—or earthquakes—are already punishing experiences. But it turns out there are some things that can make them worse: like if the vibrations hit the...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Micromachined Sensors Monitor Train Rails, Predict Failures
NASA Technology
Sensors originally designed to predict failures in a helicopter transmission have found an unexpected use detecting problems in train tracks. When...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Fast-Flow Nanofiber Filters Purify Water at Home and in the Field
NASA Technology
More than a billion people around the world lack easy access to clean water—some trek for miles just to fill jugs for themselves and their...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Orion Video Requirement Advances High-Speed, Compact Cameras
NASA Technology
Parachute deployment is usually a fairly simple—if crucial—operation. A small pilot parachute tossed into the wind might pull free a pin securing...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Miniaturized Vacuum Pumps Play Big Roles on Mars and Earth
NASA Technology
As its name implies, the Curiosity rover lowered into Gale Crater on Mars by sky crane in August 2012 has a lot of questions to answer. The most...
Spinoff: Public Safety
Wire Sensors Alert to Dangerous Conditions in the Clouds
NASA Technology
One common hazard facing airplanes is ice: not just on the ground, but in the air, where it can coat wings or engines. But how do you know when icing...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
CMOS Sensors Enable Phone Cameras, HD Video
NASA Technology
“People told me, ‘You’re an idiot to work on this,’” Eric Fossum recalls of his early experiments with what was at the time an alternate form of digital...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Novel Threading Enables New Approach to Golf Clubs
NASA Technology
NASA scientists routinely pioneer advances in cutting-edge fields like lasers and computer chips, but sometimes it’s the innovations they make in simple...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Blue-Light-Cancelling Lens Gives Skiers a Clearer View
NASA Technology
Of all the colors the human eye is capable of seeing, it is particularly sensitive to blues and greens, which comprise the middle wavelengths of the visible...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Professional Development Program Gets Bird’s-Eye View of Wineries
NASA Technology
Virginia might not yet rival California when it comes to wine production, but a growing number of wineries and vintners are cropping up across...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Rechargeable Hearing Aid Batteries Draw from NASA Research
NASA Technology
We often imagine that inventions are born whole: Thomas Edison creates the incandescent light bulb and lights up Christie Street in Menlo Park on New...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Carbon Nanotube Resin Shores Up Boats, Bikes
NASA Technology
At 100 times the strength of steel and just one-sixth the weight, it is easy to see why engineers, and not just at NASA, were immediately excited by the potential in...
Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Large-Scale 3D Printer Brings Manufacturing to the Masses
NASA Technology
When the nearest Home Depot is out of reach and Amazon.com doesn’t deliver, finding spare parts or a new tool can be a challenge. That can be true...
Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Mineral Analyzer Shakes Answers Out of Soil and Rocks
NASA Technology
How do you search for signs of life on a planet you’ve never been to? If you’re NASA, you send robots to do your dirty work, sifting through the soil and...
Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Building Sensor Monitors Power Usage, Device by Device
NASA Technology
When NASA wanted to build the greenest, most energy-efficient Federal building in the United States, it needed a way to keep track of the energy being...
Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Computer Learning Program Inventories Farmers’ Fields
NASA Technology
There are now countless Earth-imaging satellites circling the globe, with more being sent up each year than the previous year. Yet with all those lenses...
Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Low-Cost Flow Meters Bring Efficiency, Reliability to Nuclear Plants
NASA Technology
The technology looks unassuming enough: circular metal plates with multiple holes in them. The plates usually sport a large central hole...
Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources
Controlled-Release Fertilizer Takes Root in Fields, Groves Worldwide
NASA Technology
Astronaut ice cream may be an exotic treat for kids, but for real space explorers, it turns out a fresh, crunchy salad could sometimes really...