NASA Inventions and By-products You Can Find in Your Home
You don’t have to be an astronaut to enjoy the cool things NASA has invented.
NASA Inventions and By-products You Can Find in Your Home
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is often known for projects like creating ambitious telescopes that can see the beginning of the universe, or sending humans to the moon and back. But, few people know that it is also responsible for products like swimsuits, eye surgery technology, and how you take a selfie.
The everyday products listed below are just 15 of the more than 2,000 consumer products that have come out of NASA’s space program. All are based on technologies and discoveries developed directly by NASA, in partnership with NASA, or through NASA funding.
Memory foam
If your mattress, pillow, couch, sofa, or whatever contains memory foam, also known as “memory foam” because of its ability to return to its original shape after use, you can thank NASA. The material was developed by NASA-funded aeronautical engineer Charles Yost and was originally used to create aircraft seats that could better absorb impact for pilots in various tests.
The classic computer mouse
The computer mouse was invented at Stanford University in the early 1960s by Doug Englebart, based on NASA-funded research on interactive computer input. The research was conducted by NASA computer science expert Bob Taylor.
Infrared Thermometer
If you’ve ever checked your temperature with an infrared thermometer, remember that you wouldn’t have been able to do it without NASA. The US space agency developed infrared thermometers to measure the temperature of distant celestial objects, and the technology is finally making its way into homes, as a key part of household thermometers.
High-performance swimwear
Most of us don’t wear high-performance swimwear on a regular basis, but swimmers like Michael Phelps do. Speedo’s LZR Racer swimsuit – the garment of choice for elite swimmers – debuted in 2008 and features unique hydrodynamic properties that were developed through wind tunnel testing at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Cell Phone Cameras
The image sensors used in most modern digital cameras originated directly from NASA. Eric Fossum, an employee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was the first to use CMOS technology in a camera. The original goal was to create a better, cheaper, and more efficient camera system for spacecraft, but the technology quickly spread around the world.
Self-driving cars
We may see more widespread use of this technology in the near future thanks to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Quantum Science and Technology Group, whose projects began in the 1980s. Among their inventions is the evocatively named “library whisper mode optical resonator.” It’s a spherical resonator for light waves. It wasn’t until recently that the technology was put to practical use, when it was incorporated into LiDAR systems for self-driving cars.
LASIK Surgery
In an effort to determine how the lack of gravity affects eye movement, NASA conducted a series of experiments on the International Space Station in the mid-2000s. The results weren’t very helpful, but the eye-tracking technology developed based on it helped inform subsequent experiments, making LASIK vision correction surgery possible.
Scratch-resistant lenses
There have been many scratch-resistant lenses, but none have been as good as the technology in Ray-Ban’s Survivor line, which is licensed from NASA. NASA pioneered the use of coating sensitive instrument screens with a diamond-like carbon to make them 10 times more scratch-resistant than other methods. This might be a little overkill for sunglasses, but it’s still pretty awesome.
Air Traffic Control System
The Federal Aviation Administration and NASA recently completed development of an improved system for managing flights on the ground. It’s called Integrated Arrival, Departure, and Surface (IADS), and it’s now in place at 27 of the busiest airports in the United States.
Grooved Roads
Even if you don’t realize it, the world is getting less slippery thanks to NASA. Specifically, NASA researchers demonstrated that cutting thin grooves into concrete runways to create channels to drain excess water reduces the risk of slippery accidents at airports. As a result, hundreds of commercial airports around the world have installed safety grooves, and then even highways. The safety groove process has also been applied to curves and overpasses, then pedestrian walkways, ramps and steps, then food processing plants and livestock pens.
The technology has also been shown to restore wet friction performance to worn or smooth pavement surfaces and extend their life by 5 to 10 years, resulting in significant savings in maintenance costs.
Emergency Blanket
The flimsy emergency blankets that are packed in first aid kits and handed out at the end of marathons were developed by NASA in 1964. The material is made by vaporizing aluminum onto a thin plastic surface and is now used in camping gear, sun visors, space telescopes, and more. As a shield, it reflects heat back to whoever or whatever is wrapped in it.
Nike Air Shoes
These sneakers are the product of two NASA innovations. The hard rubber molding of the sneakers is done through “rubber blow molding,” a process pioneered at NASA for helmet manufacturing. The shock-absorbing material used in Nike Air comes from NASA engineer Frank Rudy.
Formula
While researching nutritional strategies for future missions to Mars, NASA scientists discovered a natural source of an omega-3 fatty acid previously found only in breast milk. This ingredient is now used in most infant formulas on the market.
Cordless Vacuums
Black and Decker worked closely with NASA in the 1960s to produce cordless drills, hammers, and other tools that could operate in low-gravity (or zero-gravity) environments. And now you can see this technology in a variety of cordless vacuums on the market.
Water Filters
While basic water filters have existed since the mid-1950s, it wasn’t until NASA poured resources into its research for the Apollo program in 1963 that modern filtration systems began to emerge. NASA has been at the forefront of research in this area because they need large amounts of clean water for long-term storage in the harsh conditions of outer space.
To achieve this goal, NASA has developed a system that works by using the ability of water to absorb pollutants and particulate matter when specially treated with charcoal. This treatment – essentially an oxidation process that opens up millions of tiny pores between the carbon atoms in the charcoal – amplifies the charcoal’s ability to absorb, with its large, porous surface area creating many places for pollutants to chemically bond to it through attraction. This leaves the resulting water free of impurities.
Microprocessor
Technically, NASA did not invent the integrated circuit, which was invented in 1958 by electrical engineer Jack Kilby, but NASA has since invented newer and more advanced variations of the integrated circuit.
NASA’s Apollo program kicked off the microchip revolution, with the U.S. government purchasing over 60% of domestically produced integrated circuits in the 1960s.
One of the first high-profile applications of microchip technology was in the Apollo guidance computer with the DSKY interface, which was used to provide onboard computing and control for navigation, as well as control of the command module and the lunar module.
Today, integrated circuits can be found in almost every area of life, from cell phones and personal computers to microwave ovens – largely thanks to the cheap processing and manufacturing of microchips from NASA’s Apollo program.
Helmets
In the 1970s, NASA invented annealing foam, a shock-absorbing material designed to improve the safety of aircraft cushions. This annealing foam was later fitted to Apollo helmets and spacecraft seats, as a lining that helped mitigate some of the extreme forces astronauts would be subjected to.
Annealing foam is a polyurethane treated with additional chemicals that has both high viscosity and density, properties ideal for absorbing significant impacts and resisting energy flow. The foam is viscoelastic and temperature-sensitive, meaning that when pressed against a heat source, it can be molded into shape.
The original incubator foam was adapted into foam insulation and introduced to the market in the early 1980s, before quickly finding its way into medical devices such as foam mattresses and sports equipment such as American football helmets and motorcycle and bicycle helmets.
Satellite TV
It is perhaps no surprise that Nasa also played a major role in the invention of satellite television. The first satellite capable of relaying TV signals was Telstar 1, launched by the agency in 1962.
It began as a joint project between Bell Laboratories to develop an experimental satellite communications system over the Atlantic Ocean. Nasa then continued to develop the technology to create more advanced systems to reduce noise and errors in the transmitted signals, resulting in the ability to transmit high-definition video and audio.
