Topic

Design Software Transforms How Commercial Jetliners Are Built

NASA Technology In the late 1990s, as computers were becoming vastly more powerful, Stuart Rogers began working on Pegasus 5—software that made use of this increasing processing...

Original Cryogenic Engine Still Powers Exploration, Defense, Industry

NASA Technology At a time when cell phones and automobile features are outdated after a few short years, it may seem impossible that any technology would remain virtually...

Time-Triggered Ethernet Slims Down Critical Data Systems

NASA Technology Ethernet computer networks date back to the 1970s and are now used virtually everywhere, including in space. Inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easy to use, Ethernet has often...

Simplified Aircraft Modeling Packs Weeks of Analysis into Minutes

NASA Technology It wasn’t Walt Silva’s job to invent a technique to dramatically speed up computational modeling of aircraft. But the NASA researcher did it anyway.

Radar Device Detects Heartbeats Trapped under Wreckage

NASA Technology Late on a sweltering morning in July 2016, David Lewis Jr. crawls into a concrete tube in a heap of rubble amid what used to be a Northern Virginia prison complex.

Surveillance System Captures, Maps Lightning Strikes

NASA Technology On July 7, 2011, as Space Shuttle Atlantis sat on the launch pad just one day before it was due to make the final voyage of NASA’s 30-year Shuttle program, lightning struck....

Virtual Reality Platform Helps Pilots Land in the Sky

NASA Technology When a plane overshoots the final approach for a landing, often the pilot’s natural—and dangerous—instinct is to pitch up the aircraft to slow down and land.

Autonomous Robots Take On Dangerous Warehouse Jobs

NASA Technology “Where does a 600-pound spider go? Anywhere she wants to.”

Drone Traffic Forecasts Show Commercial Skies of the Future

NASA Technology It’s a safe bet that the skies of the future will be hosting a lot more drones than they do today. If you can see beyond the low-flying pizza and package delivery...

Offshore Oil Workers Learn Survival Skills in Astronaut Training Pool

NASA Technology To simulate weightlessness while rehearsing for NASA’s 1966 Gemini 12 mission, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Gene Cernan practiced spacewalks underwater,...

Apollo 11 History Archive Helps Virtual Reality Program Come to Life

NASA Technology Imagine yourself in the cramped cockpit of the Apollo spacecraft heading to the moon. Look around to see Earth out one window and stars lighting up black space...

Light-Induced Oxidation Cleans Air, Surfaces, Clothes

NASA Technology In late 2015 and early 2016, while Southern California Gas workers struggled for months to stop a natural gas leak from a well at Aliso Canyon in Los Angeles, thousands of...

Ferrofluid Technology Becomes a Magnet for Pioneering Artists

NASA Technology In 2008, when Nikola Ilic came across an online video of moving ferrofluid sculptures by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama, with black liquid rising into swirling...

The Martian Garden Recreates Red Planet’s Surface

NASA Technology After the Phoenix lander settled into the northern polar region of Mars in 2008, its operators discovered that icy soil scraped from the planet’s surface was too sticky to...

Aerogel Insulation Makes Thinner, Warmer Outerwear

NASA Technology When Michael Markesbery, future cofounder of Oros, climbed the tallest mountain in the Swiss Alps with friends, he was bundled up with so many bulky layers he could barely move...

Space-Grade Insulation Keeps Beer Colder on Earth

NASA Technology A class of insulation invented to help NASA with a range of daunting tasks, from storing liquid hydrogen or helium to insulating spacecraft and keeping astronauts comfortable in...

High-Efficiency LEDs Grow Crops, Stimulate Alertness

NASA Technology NASA harnesses the power of light for purposes as varied as laser communications, 3D mapping of land surfaces, and spectroscopy to determine the composition of distant stars....

Paired Sleep Tracker, Light Therapy Tools Retrain Circadian Rhythms

NASA Technology Lack of sleep could be costing the U.S. economy around $411 billion a year, according to a 2016 estimate by the RAND Corporation. That same year, a National...

Organic Compound Turns Toxic Waste into Harmless Byproducts

NASA Technology In 2004, a team of researchers at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) was trying to develop a substance that would glow to indicate the presence of hydrazine, a...

LED Lighting Improves Efficiency, Imaging, Cuts Maintenance

NASA Technology When Stennis Space Center officials wanted to try more energy-efficient lighting in the center’s rocket engine test stands, they couldn’t simply go out and buy the...

Plant Food for Space Grows Crops on Earth

NASA Technology The goal is a fresh and tasty salad on Mars. While other NASA programs are working on getting to the Red Planet, the Agency’s Veggie team is figuring out how to grow salad ingredients...

Remote Sensing Technology Fights Forest Fires Smarter

NASA Technology Fires were raging in Northern California in June 2008, at the height of one of the state’s most destructive wildfire seasons in history, and one blaze was headed right...

Earth Images Enable Near-Perfect Crop Predictions

NASA Technology NASA has been taking pictures of Earth from space for as long as the Space Agency has been around—and well before Boston-based startup TellusLabs began using these images to...

Micronutrient Formula Strengthens Plants, Increasing Yields

NASA Technology An apple a day keeps the doctor away—but how do you bring enough apples, and other fresh food, all the way to Mars and back? Given the limits on how much cargo can be...

Chemical Simulation Software Predicts Climate Change, Air Quality

NASA Technology For climate scientists, the whole Earth is a laboratory. They need to observe what is happening across the entire planet over long swaths of time.

NASA Kite Invention Spurs Ever-Growing Educational Program

NASA Technology When an educational agency contacted NASA engineer Geoff Bland in 2010, wondering about a way to monitor ponds and streams where water samples were being collected, he...

Planet-Navigating AI “Brain” Helps Drones and Cars Avoid Collisions

NASA Technology Once you’ve designed a robot that can autonomously explore planetary terrains, putting the same technology in cars, toys, and drones seems almost easy....

Early NASA “Dream Computer Program” Still Optimizes Designs

NASA Technology At the top of the food chain, an apex predator hunts without fear of being hunted. That’s why MSC Software Corporation branded its latest software line MSC Apex...