NASA Technology

Sukra Helitek Inc.’s simplified, user-friendly computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package began with Ganesh Rajagopalan essentially trying...

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...

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 day....

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...

NASA Technology

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

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...

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:...

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...

Born out of a desire for aircraft to be able to take off and land capably at airports with shorter runways to alleviate congestion at the major hubs, the circulation control wing...

NASA Technology

Idaho is a nature-lover’s dream. Forests there blanket swaths of terrain, from the glassy lake regions of the northern Panhandle to the famous trout-fishing streams...

NASA Technology

When NASA thrusters are mentioned, most people imagine something like the breathtaking launch of the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon. Its five...

NASA Technology

Medical scientists have made great progress in recent years toward understanding how genetic factors play a role in an individual’s susceptibility or...

NASA Technology

Like satellites in orbit, some spinoffs just keep spinning.

NASA Technology

For more than 25 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided stunning photos of the universe unequalled in their depth, detail, and distinction. Hubble...

NASA Technology

As NASA sets its sights on long-duration missions deeper into the solar system, including a planned mission to Mars, astronauts will need access to...

NASA Technology

In 2007, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a call for a sensor that could equip a smartphone with the ability to detect dangerous gases and...

NASA Technology

The old saying about the inability to build a better mousetrap could also apply to aircraft design tools. For years, the best, and maybe only, way to...

NASA Technology

In the American Southwest and in northwestern Mexico, more than half the annual rainfall often comes in the form of the torrential and unpredictable...

NASA Technology

When NASA builds a spacecraft, materials engineers at the Agency have the important task of assessing the structural properties of the materials that comprise...

NASA Technology

Technology often takes circuitous paths. A magnetron developed for precision bombing during World War II led to the microwave oven, and a battery-powered drill...

NASA Technology

Finding a forest fire can be more difficult than some would expect. Seeing smoke in the distance indicates a problem, but determining the exact...

NASA Technology

In a corner of Ames Research Center in California stand a pair of rather unusual buildings, where mere mortals can control magnetic fields.

NASA Technology

From the Apollo missions through the Space Shuttle Program, NASA has relied on liquid hydrogen as a fuel source for the upper stages of its rocket launches. The reason...

NASA Technology

Building on work he and his companies did with Johnson Space Center’s In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) team, Robert Zubrin has developed and...

NASA Technology

Sharing computer code with the private sector has become a major component of NASA’s Technology Transfer Program, with the Agency’s latest software...

NASA Technology

Consider any component of a modern passenger airplane, and you’ll discover a remarkable amount of engineering complexity that went into its...

NASA Technology

In the 1990s, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Joy Crisp oversaw an effort to get a cutting-edge, ruggedized, lightweight spectrometer on a lander to...

NASA Technology

It was sometime in late 2004, and Tom Stanley, technical monitor and small business technical advisor out of Stennis Space Center, took to studying newly completed...

NASA Technology

At a glance, the surface of Mars appears to offer little in the way of natural resources. Scenes captured by the various rovers exploring the planet depict a...

NASA Technology

F rom its beginnings, the U.S. X-Plane Program has delivered big on its objective: to advance aviation science and technology through the use of experimental...