Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Organic Compound Turns Toxic Waste into Harmless Byproducts

NASA Technology

In 2004, a team of researchers at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) was trying to develop a substance that would glow to indicate the presence of...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Paired Sleep Tracker, Light Therapy Tools Retrain Circadian Rhythms

NASA Technology

Lack of sleep could be costing the U.S. economy around $411 billion a year, according to a 2016 estimate by the RAND Corporation. That same...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

High-Efficiency LEDs Grow Crops, Stimulate Alertness

NASA Technology

NASA harnesses the power of light for purposes as varied as laser communications, 3D mapping of land surfaces, and spectroscopy to determine the composition of...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Space-Grade Insulation Keeps Beer Colder on Earth

NASA Technology

A class of insulation invented to help NASA with a range of daunting tasks, from storing liquid hydrogen or helium to insulating spacecraft and keeping astronauts...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Aerogel Insulation Makes Thinner, Warmer Outerwear

NASA Technology

When Michael Markesbery, future cofounder of Oros, climbed the tallest mountain in the Swiss Alps with friends, he was bundled up with so many bulky layers he...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

The Martian Garden Recreates Red Planet’s Surface

NASA Technology

After the Phoenix lander settled into the northern polar region of Mars in 2008, its operators discovered that icy soil scraped from the planet’s surface was...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Ferrofluid Technology Becomes a Magnet for Pioneering Artists

NASA Technology

In 2008, when Nikola Ilic came across an online video of moving ferrofluid sculptures by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama, with black liquid rising into...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Light-Induced Oxidation Cleans Air, Surfaces, Clothes

NASA Technology

In late 2015 and early 2016, while Southern California Gas workers struggled for months to stop a natural gas leak from a well at Aliso Canyon in Los Angeles,...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Apollo 11 History Archive Helps Virtual Reality Program Come to Life

NASA Technology

Imagine yourself in the cramped cockpit of the Apollo spacecraft heading to the moon. Look around to see Earth out one window and stars...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Offshore Oil Workers Learn Survival Skills in Astronaut Training Pool

NASA Technology

To simulate weightlessness while rehearsing for NASA’s 1966 Gemini 12 mission, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Gene Cernan practiced spacewalks...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Drone Traffic Forecasts Show Commercial Skies of the Future

NASA Technology

It’s a safe bet that the skies of the future will be hosting a lot more drones than they do today. If you can see beyond the low-flying pizza and...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Autonomous Robots Take On Dangerous Warehouse Jobs

NASA Technology

“Where does a 600-pound spider go? Anywhere she wants to.”

The spider in question, dubbed “Spidernaut,” was part of a prototype robot team built...

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...