Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Suspended Solar Panels See the Light

To determine how well a suspended solar panel system would hold up to potentially destructive oscillations caused by wind, Skysun LLC in Cleveland, Ohio sought the help of NASA employees at Glenn...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Traveling-Wave Tubes Travel Far

To receive scientific data, NASA needed versions of electronic components that were small but powerful for launching on deep space missions, and contracted with Hughes to build them. A successor...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Learning to Code with NASA Data

To create programming teaching materials, Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Washington, collaborated with the Office of STEM Engagement at NASA Headquarters under a Space Act Agreement. By using NASA data...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

CubeSats Take a Bus into Space

CubeSats start with a hardware bus that houses and enables payloads. NASA Tipping Point funding for test flights informed the development of the Trestles bus sold by Irvine, California-based Tyvak...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Space Robotics Take a Deep Dive

The founder and many of the engineers at Houston-based Nauticus Robotics built robots at Johnson Space Center that had to operate autonomously in harsh, remote environments. Now they’ve applied that...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Cryofuels Come Under Pressure

NASA needs reliable cryofuel tanks for use in space, and the airline industry wants them to replace fossil fuels. SBIR funding from Marshall Space Flight Center for Tullahoma, Tennessee-based...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Earth’s Twin Helps with Extreme Electronics

An all-in-one, single-board computer module can withstand 900ºF conditions without a cooling system thanks to Glenn Research Center expertise in extreme-temperature technology. SBIR...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Cloning Metal Parts for Space and Earth

Physics-based computer modeling software makes it possible to build, examine, and test virtual 3D-printed metal parts that meet the exacting standards of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory....

Spinoff: Trending

NASA’s VITAL Contribution to Global Pandemic Relief

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed a ventilator that could be produced quickly and cheaply. This design has...

Spinoff: Trending

A High-Tech Farmer’s Almanac for Everyone

In order to make vast amounts of satellite data accessible to anyone, Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center moved data into the cloud, developed search algorithms, and...

Spinoff: Trending

The View from Space Keeps Getting Better

For half a century, NASA-built Landsat satellites have been recording Earth’s surface, gathering science-grade imagery in various spectral bands. That data yields valuable information for...

Spinoff: Trending

An Electronic Traffic Monitor for Airports

A collaboration between Ames Research Center, the Federal Aviation Administration, American Airlines Inc., Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and Southwest Airlines Co. resulted in a...

Spinoff: Trending

Weather Forecasters Adopt NASA’s ‘Occult’ Science

Decades ago, NASA invented radio occultation, a technique that used radio waves to study the atmospheres of other planets. Now the proliferation of navigation satellites in...

Spinoff: Trending

Shuttle-Analysis Software Improves Airplane, Turbine Safety

Ensuring safety for astronauts on the world’s first reusable spacecraft required NASA’s space shuttle engineers to take novel approaches when calculating the...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Clean Air Tech for Spacecraft Helps Fight Pandemic

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it became clear that the novel coronavirus was transmitted through the air, several companies realized their NASA-derived air-quality...

Spinoff: Transportation

Test Rockets Prepare for Distant Landings

Rocket-powered vehicle for testing lander navigation systems supports space companies

How can a spacecraft land itself on alien terrain? NASA needed a better answer than...

Spinoff: Transportation

Swinging the HAMR

From search-and-rescue operations to surveying farmland, remotely operated aircraft have become important to several industries. However, current multi-rotor designs have one drawback: endurance. Driving four or...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

'Reflecting' on Life's Daily Challenges

Hema Nambiar wants you to ask why her start-up company is called 13-One. There’s a story behind the name, one that culminates with Nambiar and more than 5,000 other women massed in New...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Research Launches a New Generation of Indoor Farming

The United Nations predicts Earth will have to feed another 2.3 billion people by the year 2050, with most concentrated in urban centers far from farmland. Current...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Helps Drones Take Flight

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, amid stay-at-home orders, social distancing requirements, and uncertainty about how COVID-19 spread, some residents of San Mateo and Contra Costa counties in...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Safely Detoxifying Soil and Groundwater with NASA Technology

At 5:12 a.m. on Sept. 28, 1982, a train derailed near Livingston, Louisiana, waking residents nearby to the sound of explosions and raging fires. What the residents...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Lighting in a Bottle

John Glenn’s first trip into Earth orbit lasted just under five hours, but today astronauts regularly stay six months or longer on the International Space Station. Experiencing over a dozen sunrises and...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Forecasting Saharan Dust to Minimize Health Risks

Last summer, wind carried nearly 24 tons of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa across the Atlantic Ocean, to North and South America, hitting islands in the Caribbean Sea...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

NASA-Born Software Helps Weather Forecasting Around the Globe

The 2020 hurricane season was one of the most active on record, and 2021’s is shaping up to be as well, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Metallic Glass Gears Up for ‘Cobots,’ Coatings, and More

Where are the robot assistants we were promised?

For all the space that robots have occupied in the popular imagination for the last hundred years – and...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Some Engineering Is Only Skin Deep

Ability to finish surfaces of 3D-printed superalloys improves performance for engines, industry

Recent advances in 3D printing with metals are making it an increasingly...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

From a Lightbox to Lamps

Dale Dell’Ario had a glowing box in his living room, and he wanted to share it.

Dell’Ario had retired in 2013 from a long career in medical device manufacturing, where he’d developed lighting...

Spinoff: Transportation

NASA Helps Private Lander Shoot for the Moon

Autonomous robots building the shelters and other structures astronauts need before they even land is an exciting idea, but is it practical? Testing such a venture on Earth won’t prove...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Stay Safe with Battery Testing for Space

NASA battery safety exams influence commercial product testing

Battery safety is incredibly important in space due to the risk of thermal runaway, a reaction where...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

From Spacesuits to Racing Suits

Technology developed for space has turned up in cars for years. From space shuttle tire engineering ending up in road tires to zero-gravity body posture studies helping make comfy car seats, decades of...