Spinoff: Public Safety

Virtual Reality Platform Helps Pilots Land in the Sky

NASA Technology

When a plane overshoots the final approach for a landing, often the pilot’s natural—and dangerous—instinct is to pitch up the aircraft to slow down and...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Surveillance System Captures, Maps Lightning Strikes

NASA Technology

On July 7, 2011, as Space Shuttle Atlantis sat on the launch pad just one day before it was due to make the final voyage of NASA’s 30-year Shuttle program,...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Radar Device Detects Heartbeats Trapped under Wreckage

NASA Technology

Late on a sweltering morning in July 2016, David Lewis Jr. crawls into a concrete tube in a heap of rubble amid what used to be a Northern Virginia prison...

Spinoff: Transportation

Simplified Aircraft Modeling Packs Weeks of Analysis into Minutes

NASA Technology

It wasn’t Walt Silva’s job to invent a technique to dramatically speed up computational modeling of aircraft. But the NASA researcher did it...

Spinoff: Transportation

Time-Triggered Ethernet Slims Down Critical Data Systems

NASA Technology

Ethernet computer networks date back to the 1970s and are now used virtually everywhere, including in space. Inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easy to use,...

Spinoff: Transportation

Original Cryogenic Engine Still Powers Exploration, Defense, Industry

NASA Technology

At a time when cell phones and automobile features are outdated after a few short years, it may seem impossible that any technology would...

Spinoff: Transportation

Design Software Transforms How Commercial Jetliners Are Built

NASA Technology

In the late 1990s, as computers were becoming vastly more powerful, Stuart Rogers began working on Pegasus 5—software that made use of this...

Spinoff: Transportation

Innovative Design Propels Small Jet Faster, Farther with Less Fuel

NASA Technology

These days computers handle a lot of the work for designing an airplane, but when it comes to seeing how well the new design will really handle...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Compact Spectrometers Unveil Clues to Diagnose Cancer

NASA Technology

It may seem hard to remember now, with thousands of planets of various types and sizes discovered throughout the galaxy, but back in the 1990s, the field of...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Virtual Therapist Offers Out-of-This-World Depression Treatment

NASA Technology

Imagine being stuck in a small space with just a few coworkers for months at a time. Each person’s work is crucial to the success—even the...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Weightless “Weight”-Lifting Builds Muscle on Earth

NASA Technology

NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid spent hundreds of hours exercising during her 188-day stay on the Russian space station Mir in 1996. Although it was her least...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Optimized Imager Tracks Cancer, Stem Cells in Medical Research

NASA Technology

After earning his doctorate, Debashish Roy set about creating a business from the biological imaging device he’d helped invent as a graduate...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Biometric Sensors Optimize Workouts

NASA Technology

What if, as a pilot was pulling heavy G-forces and headed toward a blackout, a voice in his or her ear said, “Pull out of the turn”? What if ground control had a screen...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Sterilizing Fogger Cleans Ambulances with a Breeze

NASA Technology

When paramedics come racing into a home, the last thing anybody is worrying about is where the ambulance was earlier that morning. But traces of those earlier...

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.

A typical structural loads test...

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: 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: 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: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Privately Built Facility Offers Advantages in Space Exposure Testing

NASA Technology

The conditions of space are, perhaps thankfully, difficult to reproduce on Earth. Most of the universe, beyond the atmospheres of its...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Polyimide Aerogels Boost Antennas, Insulate Pipes

NASA Technology

The challenge: make a powerful insulating material that is lightweight, strong, and flexible. The goal: an inflatable decelerator that can be folded up inside a...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Outgassing Test Facility Brings New Materials into Space Industry

NASA Technology

Anyone who can remember when cars had vinyl dashboards may be familiar with the hazy film that could appear on the windows during a hot, sunny...

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: 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: 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: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

GPS Correction Technology Lets Tractors Drive Themselves

NASA Technology

There has been much talk of self-driving cars lately, as various automakers and technology companies such as Google race to put the first fully autonomous...

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: 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: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Astronauts Instruct Newcomers on Peculiarities of Spaceflight

NASA Technology

Few people are more thoroughly trained for their work than astronauts. After all, their already-complex work is carried out in an unforgiving...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Vibration Tables Shake Up Aerospace, Car Testing

NASA Technology

When handling a multi-billion-dollar space telescope, you want to be pretty careful. Unless it’s your job to shake it with 100,000 pounds of force, that...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Zinc-Silicate Coating Blocks Corrosion

NASA Technology

NASA needs materials that are strong and can hold up over time. Sometimes that means the Space Agency designs brand-new, high-tech materials—but sometimes it sticks to...