NASA Science Show & Tell

5 Ways the Moon Landing Changed Life on Earth

When Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon 50 years ago, he famously said “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He was referring to the historic milestone of exploring beyond our own planet — but there’s also another way to think about that giant leap: the massive effort to develop technologies to safely reach, walk on the Moon and return home led to countless innovations that have improved life on Earth.

Armstrong took one small step on the lunar surface, but the Moon landing led to a giant leap forward in innovations for humanity.

Here are five examples of technology developed for the Apollo program that we’re still using today:

1. Food Safety Standards

As soon as we started planning to send astronauts into space, we faced the problem of what to feed them — and how to ensure the food was safe to eat. Can you imagine getting food poisoning on a spacecraft, hundreds of thousands of miles from home?

We teamed up with a familiar name in food production: the Pillsbury Company. The company soon realized that existing quality control methods were lacking. There was no way to be certain, without extensive testing that destroyed the sample, that the food was free of bacteria and toxins.

Pillsbury revamped its entire food-safety process, creating what became the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system. Its aim was to prevent food safety problems from occurring, rather than catch them after the fact. They managed this by analyzing and controlling every link in the chain, from the raw materials to the processing equipment to the people handling the food.

Today, this is one of the space program’s most far-reaching spinoffs. Beyond keeping the astronaut food supply safe, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Point system has also been adopted around the world — and likely reduced the risk of bacteria and toxins in your local grocery store. 

2. Digital Controls for Air and Spacecraft

The Apollo spacecraft was revolutionary for many reasons. Did you know it was the first vehicle to be controlled by a digital computer? Instead of pushrods and cables that pilots manually adjusted to manipulate the spacecraft, Apollo’s computer sent signals to actuators at the flick of a switch.

Besides being physically lighter and less cumbersome, the switch to a digital control system enabled storing large quantities of data and programming maneuvers with complex software.

Before Apollo, there were no digital computers to control airplanes either. Working together with the Navy and Draper Laboratory, we adapted the Apollo digital flight computer to work on airplanes. Today, whatever airline you might be flying, the pilot is controlling it digitally, based on the technology first developed for the flight to the Moon.

3. Earthquake-ready Shock Absorbers

A shock absorber descended from Apollo-era dampers and computers saves lives by stabilizing buildings during earthquakes.

Apollo’s Saturn V rockets had to stay connected to the fueling tubes on the launchpad up to the very last second. That presented a challenge: how to safely move those tubes out of the way once liftoff began. Given how fast they were moving, how could we ensure they wouldn’t bounce back and smash into the vehicle?

We contracted with Taylor Devices, Inc. to develop dampers to cushion the shock, forcing the company to push conventional shock isolation technology to the limit.

Shortly after, we went back to the company for a hydraulics-based high-speed computer. For that challenge, the company came up with fluidic dampers—filled with compressible fluid—that worked even better. We later applied the same technology on the Space Shuttle’s launchpad.

The company has since adapted these fluidic dampers for buildings and bridges to help them survive earthquakes. Today, they are successfully protecting structures in some of the most quake-prone areas of the world, including Tokyo, San Francisco and Taiwan.

4. Insulation for Space

We’ve all seen runners draped in silvery “space blankets” at the end of marathons, but did you know the material, called radiant barrier insulation, was actually created for space?

Temperatures outside of Earth’s atmosphere can fluctuate widely, from hundreds of degrees below to hundreds above zero. To better protect our astronauts, during the Apollo program we invented a new kind of effective, lightweight insulation.

We developed a method of coating mylar with a thin layer of vaporized metal particles. The resulting material had the look and weight of thin cellophane packaging, but was extremely reflective—and pound-for-pound, better than anything else available.

Today the material is still used to protect astronauts, as well as sensitive electronics, in nearly all of our missions. But it has also found countless uses on the ground, from space blankets for athletes to energy-saving insulation for buildings. It also protects essential components of MRI machines used in medicine and much, much more.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Marines

5. Healthcare Monitors

Patients in hospitals are hooked up to sensors that send important health data to the nurse’s station and beyond — which means when an alarm goes off, the right people come running to help.

This technology saves lives every day. But before it reached the ICU, it was invented for something even more extraordinary: sending health data from space down to Earth.

When the Apollo astronauts flew to the Moon, they were hooked up to a system of sensors that sent real-time information on their blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate and more to a team on the ground.

The system was developed for us by Spacelabs Healthcare, which quickly adapted it for hospital monitoring. The company now has telemetric monitoring equipment in nearly every hospital around the world, and it is expanding further, so at-risk patients and their doctors can keep track of their health even outside the hospital.

Only a few people have ever walked on the Moon, but the benefits of the Apollo program for the rest of us continue to ripple widely.

In the years since, we have continued to create innovations that have saved lives, helped the environment, and advanced all kinds of technology.

Now we’re going forward to the Moon with the Artemis program and on to Mars — and building ever more cutting-edge technologies to get us there. As with the many spinoffs from the Apollo era, these innovations will transform our lives for generations to come.

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10 Things: Journey to the Center of Mars

May the fifth be with you because history is about to be made: As early as May 5, 2018, we’re set to launch Mars InSight, the very first mission to study the deep interior of Mars. We’ve been roaming the surface of Mars for a while now, but when InSight lands on Nov. 26, 2018, we’re going in for a deeper look. Below, 10 things to know as we head to the heart of Mars.

Coverage of prelaunch and launch activities begins Thursday, May 3, on NASA Television and our homepage.

1. What’s in a name? 

"Insight" is to see the inner nature of something, and the InSight lander—a.k.a. Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport—will do just that. InSight will take the "vital signs" of Mars: its pulse (seismology), temperature (heat flow) and reflexes (radio science). It will be the first thorough check-up since the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago.

2. Marsquakes. 

You read that right: earthquakes, except on Mars. Scientists have seen a lot of evidence suggesting Mars has quakes, and InSight will try to detect marsquakes for the first time. By studying how seismic waves pass through the different layers of the planet (the crust, mantle and core), scientists can deduce the depths of these layers and what they're made of. In this way, seismology is like taking an X-ray of the interior of Mars.

Want to know more? Check out this one-minute video.

3. More than Mars. 

InSight is a Mars mission, but it’s also so much more than that. By studying the deep interior of Mars, we hope to learn how other rocky planets form. Earth and Mars were molded from the same primordial stuff more than 4.5 billion years ago, but then became quite different. Why didn’t they share the same fate? When it comes to rocky planets, we’ve only studied one in great detail: Earth. By comparing Earth's interior to that of Mars, InSight's team hopes to better understand our solar system. What they learn might even aid the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system, narrowing down which ones might be able to support life.

4. Robot testing. 

InSight looks a bit like an oversized crane game: When it lands on Mars this November, its robotic arm will be used to grasp and move objects on another planet for the first time. And like any crane game, practice makes it easier to capture the prize.

Want to see what a Mars robot test lab is like? Take a 360 tour.

5. The gang’s all here. 

InSight will be traveling with a number of instruments, from cameras and antennas to the heat flow probe. Get up close and personal with each one in our instrument profiles.

6. Trifecta. 

InSight has three major parts that make up the spacecraft: Cruise Stage; Entry, Descent, and Landing System; and the Lander. Find out what each one does here.

7. Solar wings. 

Mars has weak sunlight because of its long distance from the Sun and a dusty, thin atmosphere. So InSight’s fan-like solar panels were specially designed to power InSight in this environment for at least one Martian year, or two Earth years.

8. Clues in the crust. 

Our scientists have found evidence that Mars’ crust is not as dense as previously thought, a clue that could help researchers better understand the Red Planet’s interior structure and evolution. “The crust is the end-result of everything that happened during a planet’s history, so a lower density could have important implications about Mars’ formation and evolution,” said Sander Goossens of our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

9. Passengers. 

InSight won’t be flying solo—it will have two microchips on board inscribed with more than 2.4 million names submitted by the public. "It's a fun way for the public to feel personally invested in the mission," said Bruce Banerdt of our Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission's principal investigator. "We're happy to have them along for the ride."

10. Tiny CubeSats, huge firsts. 

The rocket that will loft InSight beyond Earth will also launch a separate NASA technology experiment: two mini-spacecraft called Mars Cube One, or MarCO. These suitcase-sized CubeSats will fly on their own path to Mars behindInSight. Their goal is to test new miniaturized deep space communication equipment and, if the MarCOs make it to Mars, may relay back InSight data as it enters the Martian atmosphere and lands. This will be a first test of miniaturized CubeSat technology at another planet, which researchers hope can offer new capabilities to future missions.

Check out the full version of ‘Solar System: 10 Thing to Know This Week’ HERE. 

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Celebrate Today’s Solar Eclipse With NASA

Today, Aug. 21, the Moon’s shadow is sweeping across North America. People across the continent have the chance to see a partial solar eclipse if skies are clear.

For those within the narrow path of totality, stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, that partial eclipse will become total for a few brief moments. 

Make sure you’re using proper solar filters (not sunglasses) or an indirect viewing method if you plan to watch the eclipse in person.

Wherever you are, you can also watch today’s eclipse online with us at nasa.gov/eclipselive. Starting at noon ET, our show will feature views from our research aircraft, high-altitude balloons, satellites and specially-modified telescopes, as well as live reports from cities across the country and the International Space Station.

Learn all about today’s eclipse at eclipse2017.nasa.gov.

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Check out tiny-house-looking satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich

It might look like something you’d find on Earth, but this piece of technology has a serious job to do: track global sea level rise with unprecedented accuracy. It’s #SeeingTheSeas mission will:

Provide information that will help researchers understand how climate change is reshaping Earth's coastlines – and how fast this is happenin.

Help researchers better understand how Earth's climate is changing by expanding the global atmospheric temperature data record

Help to improve weather forecasts by providing meteorologists information on atmospheric temperature and humidity.

Tune in tomorrow, Nov. 21 at 11:45 a.m. EST to watch this U.S.-European satellite launch to space! Liftoff is targeted for 12:17 p.m. EST. Watch HERE. 

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NASA Technology in Your Life

How does NASA technology benefit life on Earth? It probably has an impact in more ways than you think! Since 1976, our Spinoff program has profiled nearly 2,000 space technologies that have transformed into commercial products and services. In celebration of Spinoff’s 40th year of publication, we’ve assembled a collection of spinoffs that have had the greatest impact on Earth. 

Take a look and see how many you utilize on a regular basis:

Digital Image Sensors

Whether you take pictures and videos with a DSLR camera or a cell phone, or even capture action on the go with a device like a GoPro Hero, you’re using NASA technology. The CMOS active pixel sensor in most digital image- capturing devices was invented when we needed to miniaturize cameras for interplanetary missions. This technology is also widely used in medical imaging and dental X-ray devices.

Enriched Baby Formula

While developing life support for Mars missions, NASA-funded researchers discovered a natural source for an omega-3 fatty acid previously found primarily in breast milk that plays a key role in infant development. The ingredient has since been added to more than 90% of infant formula on the market and is helping babies worldwide develop healthy brains, eyes and hearts.

NASTRAN Software

NASTRAN is a software developed by our engineers that performs structural analysis in the 1960s. Still popular today, it’s been used to help design everything from airplanes and cars to nuclear reactors and even Disney’s Space Mountain roller coaster.

Food Safety Standards

Looking to ensure the absolute safety of prepackaged foods for spaceflight, we partnered with the Pillsbury Company to create a new, systematic approach to quality control. Now known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), the method has become an industry standard that benefits consumers worldwide by keeping food free from a wide range of potential chemical, physical and biological hazards.

Neutral Body Posture Specifications

What form does the human body naturally assume when all physical influences, including the pull of gravity, stop affecting it? We conducted research to find out using Skylab, America’s first space station, and later published specifications for what it called neutral body posture. The study has informed seat designs in everything from airplanes and office chairs to several models of Nissan automobiles.

Advanced Water Filtration

We recently discovered unexpected sources of water on the moon and Mars, but even so, space remains a desert for human explorers, and every drop must be recycled and reused. A nano filter devised to purify water in orbit is currently at work on Earth, in devices that supply water to remote villages as well as in a water bottle that lets hikers and adventurers stay hydrated using streams and lakes.

Swimsuit Designs

Wind-tunnel testing at our Langley Research Center played a key role in the development of Speedo’s LZR Racer swimsuit, proving which materials and seams best reduced drag as a swimmer cuts through the water. The swimsuit made a splash during its Olympic debut in 2008, as nearly every medal winner and world-record breaker wore the suit.

Air Purifier

When plants grow, they release a gas called ethylene that accelerates decay, hastening the wilting of flowers and the ripening of fruits and vegetables. Air circulation on Earth keeps the fumes from building up, but in the hermetically sealed environment of a spacecraft, ethylene poses a real challenge to the would-be space farmers. We funded the development of an ethylene scrubber for the International Space Station that has subsequently proved capable of purifying air on Earth from all kinds of pathogens and particulates. Grocery stores use it to keep produce fresh longer. It’s also been marketed for home use and has even been embraced by winemakers, who employ the scrubber to keep aging wine in barrels free from mold, mildew and musty odors.

Scratch-Resistant, UV-Reflective Lenses

Some of the earliest research into effective scratch-resistant coatings for prescription and sunglass lenses drew from work done at Ames Research Center on coatings for astronaut helmet visors and plastic membranes used in water purification systems. In the 1980s, we developed sunlight-filtering lenses to provide eye protection and enhance colors, and these lenses have found their way into sunglasses, ski goggles and safety masks for welders.

Dustbuster

An Apollo-era partnership with Black & Decker to build battery-operated tools for moon exploration and sample collection led to the development of a line of consumer, medical and industrial hand-held cordless tools. This includes the popular Dustbuster cordless vacuum.

To see even more of our spinoff technologies, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/40-years-of-nasa-spinoff

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Science Launching to Station Looks Forward and Back

Some of the earliest human explorers used mechanical tools called sextants to navigate vast oceans and discover new lands. Today, high-tech tools navigate microscopic DNA to discover previously unidentified organisms. Scientists aboard the International Space Station soon will have both types of tools at their disposal.

Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to launch its ninth contracted cargo resupply mission to the space station no earlier than May 21. Sending crucial science, supplies and cargo to the crew of six humans living and working on the orbiting laboratory.

Our Gemini missions conducted the first sextant sightings from a spacecraft, and designers built a sextant into Apollo vehicles as a lost-communications navigation backup. The Sextant Navigation investigation tests use of a hand-held sextant for emergency navigation on missions in deep space as humans begin to travel farther from Earth.

Jim Lovell (far left) demonstrated on Apollo 8 that sextant navigation could return a space vehicle home. 

The remoteness and constrained resources of living in space require simple but effective processes and procedures to monitor the presence of microbial life, some of which might be harmful. Biomolecule Extraction and Sequencing Technology (BEST) advances the use of sequencing processes to identify microbes aboard the space station that current methods cannot detect and to assess mutations in the microbial genome that may be due to spaceflight.  

Genes in Space 3 performed in-flight identification of bacteria on the station for the first time. BEST takes that one step farther, identifying unknown microbial organisms using a process that sequences directly from a sample with minimal preparation, rather than with the traditional technique that requires growing a culture from the sample.

Adding these new processes to the proven technology opens new avenues for inflight research, such as how microorganisms on the station change or adapt to spaceflight.

The investigation’s sequencing components provide important information on the station’s microbial occupants, including which organisms are present and how they respond to the spaceflight environment -- insight that could help protect humans during future space exploration. Knowledge gained from BEST could also provide new ways to monitor the presence of microbes in remote locations on Earth.

Moving on to science at a scale even smaller than a microbe, the new Cold Atom Lab (CAL) facility could help answer some big questions in modern physics.

CAL creates a temperature ten billion (Yup. BILLION) times colder than the vacuum of space, then uses lasers and magnetic forces to slow down atoms until they are almost motionless. CAL makes it possible to observe these ultra-cold atoms for much longer in the microgravity environment on the space station than would be possible on the ground.

Results of this research could potentially lead to a number of improved technologies, including sensors, quantum computers and atomic clocks used in spacecraft navigation.

A partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Space Application Services (SpaceAps), The International Commercial Experiment, or ICE Cubes Service, uses a sliding framework permanently installed on the space station and “plug-and-play” Experiment Cubes.

The Experiment Cubes are easy to install and remove, come in different sizes and can be built with commercial off-the-shelf components, significantly reducing the cost and time to develop experiments.

ICE Cubes removes barriers that limit access to space, providing more people access to flight opportunities. Potential fields of research range from pharmaceutical development to experiments on stem cells, radiation, and microbiology, fluid sciences, and more.

For daily nerd outs, follow @ISS_Research on Twitter!

Watch the Launch + More!

What’s On Board Briefing

Join scientists and researchers as they discuss some of the investigations that will be delivered to the station on Saturday, May 19 at 1 p.m. EDT at nasa.gov/live. Have questions? Use #askNASA

CubeSat Facebook Live

The International Space Station is often used to deploy small satellites, a low-cost way to test technology and science techniques in space. On board this time, for deployment later this summer, are three CubeSats that will help us monitor rain and snow, study weather and detect and filter radio frequency interference (RFI). 

Join us on Facebook Live on Saturday, May 19 at 3:30 p.m. EDT on the NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility page to hear from experts and ask them your questions about these small satellites. 

Pre-Launch Briefing

Tune in live at nasa.gov/live as mission managers provide an overview and status of launch operations at 11 a.m. EDT on Sunday, May 20. Have questions? Use #askNASA

LIFTOFF!

Live launch coverage will begin on Monday, May 21 4:00 a.m. on NASA Television, nasa.gov/live, Facebook Live, Periscope, Twitch, Ustream and YouTube. Liftoff is slated for 4:39 a.m.

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Black Hole Sculpts an Hourglass Galaxy

When it comes to galaxies, our home, the Milky Way, is rather neat and orderly. Other galaxies can be much more chaotic. For example, the Markarian 573 galaxy has a black hole at its center which is spewing beams of light in opposite directions, giving its inner regions more of an hourglass shape. 

Our scientists have long been fascinated by this unusual structure, seen above in optical light from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now their search has taken them deeper than ever — all the way into the super-sized black hole at the center of one galaxy.

So, what do we think is going on? When the black hole gobbles up matter, it releases a form of high-energy light called radiation (particularly in the form of X-rays), causing abnormal patterns in the flow of gas. 

Let’s take a closer look.

Meet Markarian 573, the galaxy at the center of this image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, located about 240 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus. It’s the galaxy’s odd structure and the unusual motions of its components that inspire our scientists to study it.

As is the case with other so-called active galaxies, the ginormous black hole at the center of Markarian 573 likes to eat stuff. A thick ring of dust and gas accumulates around it, forming a doughnut. This ring only permits light to escape the black hole in two cone-shaped regions within the flat plane of the galaxy — and that’s what creates the hourglass, as shown in the illustration above.

Zooming out, we can see the two cones of emission (shown in gold in the animation above) spill into the galaxy's spiral arms (blue). As the galaxy rotates, gas clouds in the arms sweep through this radiation, which makes them light up so our scientists can track their movements from Earth.

What happens next depends on how close the gas is to the black hole. Gas that’s about 2,500 light-years from the black hole picks up speed and streams outward (shown as darker red and blue arrows). Gas that’s farther from the black hole also becomes ionized, but is not driven away and continues its motion around the galaxy as before.

Here is an actual snapshot of the inner region of Markarian 573, combining X-ray data (blue) from our Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from our Hubble Space Telescope. Given its strange appearance, we’re left to wonder: what other funky shapes might far-off galaxies take?

For more information about the bizarre structure of Markarian 573, visit http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12657  

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Pew! Pew! Pew! 

Imagine slow-motion fireworks that started exploding 170 years ago and are still continuing. This type of firework is not launched into Earth's atmosphere, but rather into space by a doomed super-massive star, called Eta Carinae. 

Enjoy the the latest view from our Hubble Space Telescope. 

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Flooding Along the Mississippi

Rain, snowmelt, and soil moisture—those three factors might push portions of the Upper Mississippi River into major flooding this spring. Meanwhile, the middle and lower reaches of the river are already well out of their banks.

Intense storms over February 22-24, 2019, caused major flooding along the Middle Mississippi River. On February 25, 2019, the Landsat 8 satellite acquired images of swollen portions of the Mississippi River. The video above shows a false-color view of flooding near Memphis, Tennessee comparing February 2019 to February 2014. Flood waters appear blue; vegetation is green; and bare ground is brown. Notice how the Ohio River and Mississippi River have swelled near Cairo, the southernmost city in Illinois.

National Weather Service forecasters noted that higher-than-average precipitation in autumn 2018 saturated soils in the region, so additional rain or snowmelt from this winter will likely result in excessive runoff and increased flooding threats.

Rapid snowmelt will also play a role in flooding this spring in the Midwest. Parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin have built up snowpack of nearly 25 inches, so melting snow alone could propel many areas into major flooding.

Read the full story here.

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Black Hole Friday Deals!

Get these deals before they are sucked into a black hole and gone forever! This “Black Hole Friday,” we have some cosmic savings that are sure to be out of this world.

Your classic black holes — the ultimate storage solution.

Galactic 5-for-1 special! Learn more about Stephan’s Quintet.

Limited-time offer game DLC! Try your hand at the Roman Space Observer Video Game, Black Hole edition, available this weekend only.

Standard candles: Exploding stars that are reliably bright. Multi-functional — can be used to measure distances in space!

Feed the black hole in your stomach. Spaghettification’s on the menu.

Act quickly before the stars in this widow system are gone!

Add some planets to your solar system! Grab our Exoplanet Bundle.

Get ready to ride this (gravitational) wave before this Black Hole Merger ends!

Be the center of attention in this stylish accretion disk skirt. Made of 100% recycled cosmic material.

Should you ever travel to a black hole? No. But if you do, here’s a free guide to make your trip as safe* as possible. *Note: black holes are never safe. 

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