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...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Scheduling Software Plans Public, Private Space Missions

NASA Technology

When Alex and Ella Herz were working at Johnson Space Center in the late 1980s and early ’90s, it wasn’t the easiest time to plan payloads for...

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: Computer Technology

Laser Imaging Helps Archaeologists Dig Up History

NASA Technology

Some 10,500 years ago, what is now western Oklahoma teemed in late summer and early fall with bison, traipsing through the grassy landscape. For the humans who...

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: 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: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Earth Observation Spots, Helps Prevent Rainforest Fires

NASA Technology

Since the launch of the first Landsat satellite in 1972, NASA’s observations of Earth from space have famously been used for charting trends in climate,...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Satellite Imagery Sheds Light on Agricultural Water Use

NASA Technology

Earth may be the “Blue Planet,” with more than 70 percent of its surface covered in water, but it is still a thirsty planet, with freshwater in heavy...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Power Amplifiers Boost Radar, Communications, Defense Systems

NASA Technology

Normally, state-of-the-art technology comes at a cost. But when QuinStar Technology was subcontracted in 2009 to build a power amplifier for one of...

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...

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: Computer Technology

Light-Analysis Software Explodes across Industries

NASA Technology

Edward Freniere and a partner founded Lambda Research Corporation in 1992 with the idea of developing software to simulate the behavior of light, basing their...

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

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: 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: Computer Technology

Program Predicts Aerothermodynamics of Reentry, Subsonic Flight

NASA Technology

Traveling nearly five miles per second, the Space Shuttle began each reentry with nothing to slow it down but the air. The gasses rushing over its...

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: 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: 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...