Stories
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Facility Focus: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Founded on July 1, 1960, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL is one of NASA’s largest field centers. Marshall engineers designed, built, tested, and helped launch the Saturn V...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Researchers, drawing inspiration from bacteria, have designed smart, bio-compatible microrobots that are highly flexible. Because these devices are able to swim through fluids and modify their shape when...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Making electric cars lighter also involves reducing the weight of the motor. One way to do that is by constructing it from fiber-reinforced polymer materials. A new cooling concept was...
Briefs: Materials
NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed a method in which a metal matrix composite (MMC) material is incorporated into a metallic structure during a one-step...
Question of the Week: Transportation
Will Carbon Fibers Find a New Place in Vehicles?
In a Tech Briefs article last week, Virginia Tech professor Greg Liu spoke about his team’s newly developed porous carbon fibers, and how the material may someday change how vehicles are built and powered.
Articles: Aerospace
Lightweighting design is an extensively explored and utilized concept in many industries, especially in aerospace applications, and is associated with the green aviation concept. The...
Briefs: Test & Measurement
Traditional methods, such as reverse osmosis, that remove contaminants from water are expensive and energy-intensive. Researchers have developed technology to remove contaminants from water, but...
Briefs: Aerospace
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a method that introduces solids and particulates — specifically aerogels — into composites or...
Briefs: Materials
Composite Advances Lignin as Renewable 3D Printing Material
Lignin is the material left over from the processing of biomass. It gives plants rigidity and also makes biomass resistant to being broken down into useful products. Researchers combined a melt-stable hardwood lignin with conventional plastic, a low-melting nylon, and carbon fiber to...
Blog: Transportation
Tesla uses batteries to store energy underneath the car seats. What if we could store energy everywhere on the vehicle?
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Film Blocks Electromagnetic Interference
Electromagnetic interference (EMI) can harm smartphones, tablets, chips, drones, wearables, aircraft, and human health. EMI is increasing with the explosive proliferation of devices that generate it. A technique was developed to produce relatively low-cost EMI-blocking composite films.
Briefs: Materials
When choosing materials to make something, tradeoffs need to be made among properties such as thickness, stiffness, and weight. A new material called nanocardboard was...
Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
By adding nanopores to nickel, James Pikul and his team created a kind of "metallic wood."
INSIDER: Imaging
An ultrafast laser that fires pulses of light just 100 millionths of a nanosecond in duration could potentially revolutionize the way NASA technicians manufacture and...
INSIDER: Photonics/Optics
Scientists from the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) — a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory — have dramatically improved...
Briefs: Materials
Composite Material Cools Itself Down Under Extreme Temperatures
A material, inspired by nature, can regulate its own temperature and could be used to treat burns and help space capsules withstand atmospheric forces. The research used a network of multiple microchannels with active flowing fluids (fluidics) as a method and proof-of-concept to...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
In biology, there are many examples where light induces movement or change — think of flowers and leaves turning toward sunlight. Magnetic elastomeric composites were developed that move in different ways...
Articles: Materials
With the computational power and software available today, numerical simulation is a real option to quickly get answers to complicated technical, scientific, and engineering questions. Not only has the hardware doubled...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed the SHEARLESS composite boom with a final cross-section shape that is lenticular and is flexible enough to allow...
Q&A: Materials
Professor Shahsavari and graduate student Sung Hoon have demonstrated a process for producing a cement that is stronger, lighter, and more durable than the traditional...
Articles: Robotics, Automation & Control
DON’T MELT. MELD.™
The MELD™ technology enables additive manufacturing (AM) of metals. This patented process is unique because there is no...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
A new method increases the service life of concrete structures by reducing the infiltration rates of deleterious ions. The key is a nano-sized additive that slows down penetration of chloride...
Products: Materials
COMSOL, Burlington, MA, introduced COMSOL Multiphysics® version 5.4 that features the new COMSOL Compiler™ for creating standalone simulation applications and digital twins for the Windows® and Linux® operating...
Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.
News: Sensors/Data Acquisition
DETECTING PLASTIC LANDMINES
Hidden PFM-1 anti-personnel landmines are unexploded ordnance (UXO) devices that pose a difficult challenge to conventional landmine...
Briefs: Materials
A technique that enables on-demand control of composite behavior could enable a variety of new capabilities for future rotorcraft design, performance, and maintenance. The focus of the research was on...
INSIDER: Energy
New solar energy research from Arizona State University demonstrates that silicon-based tandem photovoltaic modules, which convert sunlight to electricity with higher efficiency than...
Briefs: Materials
A device and method have been developed to conduct compression and tensile tests on soft materials such as flocculated sediments, biopolymers, biological materials, and food stuffs. The device...
Briefs: Materials
High-Kinetic-Energy Penetrator Shielding and High-Wear-Resistance Materials Fabricated with Boron Nitride Nanotubes and BNNT Polymer Composites
In recent years, anti-penetration materials have been more widely used for armor, bulletproof vests, and micrometeoroid and orbital debris protection layers for space-suits, space vehicles, and structures....
Top Stories
Blog: Imaging
Ultrasound Wristband Precisely Tracks Hand Movements in Real Time
Podcasts: Information Technology
Arm’s Agentic AI CPU: Engineering the Next Generation of AI Data Centers
Quiz: Manned Systems
National Astronaut Day 2026: Astronauts and Space Missions Quiz
Articles: Design
Redefining the Automotive Industry with Versatile Innovation
Blog: Aerospace
Lincoln Laboratory Laser Communications Terminal Launches on Historic...
Application Briefs: Connectivity
Webcasts
Webinars: Test & Measurement
Hidden Measurement Errors in AI Data Center Power Integrity
Webinars: Electronics & Computers
Superior Environmental Protection with Ultra-Thin Parylene and Multilayer...
Summits: Automotive
Battery Manufacturing & Simulation Summit 2026
Webinars: Energy
Virtual Screening of Materials for Increased Battery Performance
Webinars: Software
Scaling SDV Development with Virtualization
Webinars: Motion Control
Why Your Motor Behaves Badly: See BLDC Control Signals, Power, and EMI in One...
