Spinoff: Computer Technology

Low-Cost Transceiver Will Allow First Laser Mass Communication

NASA Technology

Since the advent of the laser in the 1960s, engineers have struggled to use light beams in free space to send information the way we use radio waves....

Spinoff: Transportation

Space-Age Insulator Evolves to Replace Plastic and Save Weight

NASA Technology

When aerogels were first invented in the 1930s, nobody had much use for them. And yet, nearly a century later, these materials could become as...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Building-Monitoring System Provides Insights for Sustainability

NASA Technology

When we talk about “green buildings,” the conversation is generally about reducing consumption. That’s because buildings and their occupants...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Collaborative Platform Trains Students in Simulation and Modeling

NASA Technology

It’s the 2050s. On the far side of the Moon, in the vast, pockmarked South Pole-Aitken Basin impact crater, groups of college students from...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Space Station Garden Shines Light on Earth-Based Horticulture

NASA Technology

Astronauts have been gardening on the International Space Station for years to learn how plants grow in microgravity, with the idea that space crops...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Rocket Design Leads to Turbo-Charged Air Purifier

NASA Technology

The founders of Wynd, a start-up that makes personal air purifiers, didn’t particularly have space exploration on the brain when they built their prototype. But...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Emissive Coatings Cut Industrial Costs, Emissions, Fuel Consumption

NASA Technology

It’s no surprise that the experimental X-Plane Program has led to improvements in commercial flight, but the program also produces...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Material for Mars Makes Life-Saving Sutures

NASA Technology

Although NASA has sent many missions to Mars, nothing, so far, has ever come back. That’s something the Agency hopes to change—and it is working on the technology...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

NASA Plant Research Offers a Breath of Fresh Air

NASA Technology

Try to name sources of air pollution. Most likely your first thoughts would be things like exhaust from burning coal or driving a car. But, perhaps...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Space Mission Planning System Targets Advertising with Precision

NASA Technology

Most Internet users may not know that every time they see an online ad, it was placed there after a near-instant auction for that slot. Each slot...

Spinoff: Public Safety

NASA Brings Accuracy to World’s Global Positioning Systems

NASA Technology

In the 1960s, NASA used a network of radio telescopes and a technique called very large baseline interferometry (VLBI) to capture images of quasars in...

Spinoff: Computer Technology

Tiny Springs Improve Electronic Reliability

NASA Technology

Space exploration comes with many giant challenges, but some of them are downright tiny. One project to solve a connection issue in printed circuit boards has resulted...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Phase-Change Coating Absorbs Heat from Rockets, Pipes, Beer

NASA Technology

Most people enjoy an icy drink on a hot summer day without thinking about the physics happening inside the glass. But the phase-change reaction—in...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Deep-Space Food Science Research Improves 3D-Printing Capabilities

NASA Technology

Crew health is critical to any successful mission, and maintaining astronauts’ nutrition gets harder the farther they get from Earth and any...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Simulated Space Dirt Supports Future Asteroid Mining

NASA Technology

When companies finally begin mining asteroids in space, they probably won’t be looking for precious metals, nor anything else normally mined on Earth. Some...

Spinoff: Consumer, Home, and Recreation

Light Research Aids Slumber

NASA Technology

In the age of smartphones and e-readers, with touchscreens and LED displays seemingly on every appliance and everywhere else, it has also become quite commonplace to talk about the...

Spinoff: Transportation

Battery Innovations Power All-Electric Aircraft

NASA Technology

The X-planes, experimental aircraft built by NASA and the military, started out by breaking the sound barrier in 1947 and have been pushing through invisible...

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Biometric Sensor Tracks Vital Signs for Health

NASA Technology

NASA monitors its astronauts in orbit 24/7, aiming both to learn new information about how human bodies adapt to microgravity as well as to keep track of their health...

Spinoff: Environmental and Agricultural Resources

Electrified Bacteria Clean Wastewater, Generate Power

NASA Technology

NASA recently sent into space organisms that might sound like they came from space to begin with—microbes that can essentially breathe electricity.

Spinoff: Public Safety

Detailed Spectrometry Makes Dangerous-Materials Testing Safer

NASA Technology

In Chris McKay’s search for signs of life on other worlds, some of the strongest clues can be found by identifying isotopes.

Spinoff: Transportation

Super-Accurate Atomic Clocks Could Aid in Navigation, Communication

NASA Technology

Do you know what time it is?

Spinoff: Transportation

Shuttle Tire Sensors Warn Drivers of Flat Tires

NASA Technology

How many people can think of a time when they got to their destination only to realize one of their car tires was dangerously low on air? Or they heard an ominous...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

Vibration Isolator Steadies Optics for Telescopes

NASA Technology

Anybody who has ever tried to hold a camera steady for a long exposure in low light knows exactly what inevitably happens: the camera shakes, and the image blurs....

Spinoff: Health and Medicine

Unique Polymer Finds Widespread Use in Heart Devices

NASA Technology

A material that a NASA scientist stumbled on in the early 1990s has now helped to keep hundreds of thousands of patients’ hearts beating properly all over the...

Spinoff: Industrial Productivity & Manufacturing Technology

IonCCD Enables Fast, Reliable, Inexpensive Mass Spectrometry

NASA Technology

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has a long history of pioneering the use of the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which it used to build some of...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Methane Detector Sniffs Out Leaks

NASA Technology

Methane is everywhere on Earth, for better and for worse. Among other things, it’s the main ingredient in the natural gas that powers heating, cooking, and electricity. It’s...

Spinoff: Public Safety

Wrapped Tanks Cut Weight on Everything from Buses to Paintball Guns

NASA Technology

What do naval anti-missile guns, infant incubators, the Phoenix Mars lander, and high-end paintball guns have in common? All these...

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: 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 with...

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...