2003
Using photorefractive optics technology and experience developed in the Landsat and Skylab Space Telescope programs, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center innovators created an apparatus for detecting human eye defects. The innovators found that different eye abnormalities and diseases cause the eyes to reflect light in distinctly different ways.
Vision Research Corporation integrated the technology into VisiScreen, an ocular screening system, which takes a detailed, highly precise photo of the subject's eyes. This photo is then analyzed to detect simple near-sightedness and far-sightedness as...
2002
In a large urban area there may be as many as 100 AM and FM radio stations on the air. However, most broadcasts are replete with commercials and sometimes even within the urban area broadcast reception may be poor and if you drive out of the urban area reception is lost. Space technology is providing an alternative. One hundred crystal-clear radio channels coming from a satellite and providing you with digital sound that will never fade, no matter where you are or how far you travel nationwide. In 1997, two companies were the winning bidders for an FCC auction for specific frequencies that...
2001
Product identification technology pioneered by NASA for tracking Space Shuttle parts is being used to mark everything from groceries to automobile parts.The application of compressed symbology, a two-dimensional symbol marking system to parts marking was developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center for the Space Shuttle Program, where millions and millions of parts, some as small as a dime, must be tracked.
Bar coding works well however it requires labels which don't survive in space and other industrial conditions on earth. In the late 1980's Fred Schramm was tasked with producing a system...
Understanding climate changes and the parameters influencing the climate is very important. Infrared imaging is an important technology for gathering useful information however, prior to 1990, no photodetector arrays had been fabricated that would operate at infrared wavelengths necessary for detecting these changes in ecosystems. In a unique collaboration between the Goddard Space Flight Center, and ATT/Bell Labs the first quantum well photodetector array capable of operating in the far infrared was developed and incorporated into a camera system that successfully performed airborne imaging...
Dr. David Hathaway and Paul Meyer of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center have worked on several criminal cases with the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hathaway, a solar physicist is usually busy studying images of violent explosions on the Sun and Meyer, an atmospheric scientist, examines hazardous weather conditions on Earth. The scientist's foray into the world of forensics began when they helped the FBI analyze video of the bombing at the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta. Hathaway and Meyer successfully clarified videotape images made with handheld camcorders,...
2000
In the mid 1990s NASA discovered an environmental problem with the material that was being used to lubricate the massive track system on the shuttle mobile launch transporter. Not surprisingly the lubricant requirements are rather extraordinary for this transporter. The product has to provide long-lasting and complete lubrication for a moving set of tracks that are carrying a 12 million pound load. To satisfy the environmental requirement it also has to be biodegradable. In 1994, the challenge of producing a new lubricant was accepted by Sun Coast Chemicals of Daytona, which brought a team of...
A few decades ago visionaries at Hughes Electronics Corporation believed that it should be possible to produce a digitally-based, direct broadcast satellite (DBS) that would provide services directly to home consumers. This idea was based upon a perceived growing market and the technology and know-how the corporation had from developing satellites for military and telecommunications customers. Various innovators within Hughes pursued the concept and in 1984 Hughes received permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to construct a direct broadcast satellite. Hughes invested $...
One of NASA's life science research goals is to better understand plant growth in microgravity. NASA found that it was difficult to use traditional plant growth light sources in space because they require considerable power and turn much of it into heat. This means that the experimental system has to have good controls to eliminate temperature variance that could affect plant growth results. The Wisconsin Center for Space Automation & Robotics proposed using light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the photon source for plant growth experiments conducted in space. This idea generated considerable...
1999
Since the 1970's when charged coupled devices (CCD's) were first developed, camera and video companies have been seeking to improve the technology. CCD's provide good image quality, but they are expensive, power hungry, and with the required accessory chips, bulky. Recognizing the shortcomings of CCD technology, and with the continuing need for lightweight imaging systems especially for interplanetary spacecraft applications, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) began research on a second-generation solid state image sensor technology.
In late 1992 that research produced the complementary...
Based on turbine technology developed for use in liquid propellant rocket engines, this specially designed small, lightweight, high speed turbine pumps blood without damage to the delicate, individual blood cells. A joint effort beginning in 1988 between NASA and a group of doctors headed by Dr. Michael DeBakey led to development of this Ventricular Assist Device (VAD), a small, efficient axial flow blood pump.
In order to develop the high performance required of the liquid propellant Space Shuttle main engines, NASA pushed the state of the art in the technology of turbopump design. Using...
Pages
