Sensors Provide Early Warning of Biological Threats

Originating Technology/NASA Contribution 

Containing millions of carbon nanotubes, the NASA biosensor can alert inspectors to minute amounts of potentially dangerous organic contaminants.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates there are between 4 and 11 million cases of acute gastrointestinal illnesses in the United States each year—caused by pathogens in public drinking water. The bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Salmonella have within the past few years contaminated spinach and tomato supplies, leading to nationwide health scares. Elsewhere, waterborne diseases are devastating populations in developing countries like Zimbabwe, where a cholera epidemic erupted in 2008 and claimed over 4,000 lives.

Scientists have found an unexpected source of inspiration in the effort to prevent similar disasters: the search for life on Mars. The possibility of life on the Red Planet has been a subject of popular and scientific fascination since the 19th century. While Martian meteorites have turned up controversial hints of organic activity, and NASA’s exploratory efforts have delivered important discoveries related to potential life—the presence of water ice, and plumes of methane in Mars’s atmosphere—direct evidence of organisms on our closest planetary relative has yet to be found.

In order to help detect biological traces on Mars, scientists at Ames Research Center began work on an ultrasensitive biosensor in 2002. The chief components of the sensor are carbon nanotubes, which are the major focus of research at the Center for Nanotechnology at Ames—the U.S. Government’s largest nanotechnology research group and one of the largest in the world. Tubes of graphite about 1/50,000th the diameter of a human hair, carbon nanotubes can be grown up to several millimeters in length and display remarkable properties. They possess extreme tensile strength (the equivalent of a cable 1 millimeter in diameter supporting nearly 14,000 pounds) and are excellent conductors of heat and electricity.

It is the nanotubes’ electrical properties that Ames researchers employed in creating the biosensor. The sensor contains a bioreceptor made of nanotubes tipped with single strands of nucleic acid of waterborne pathogens, such as E. coli and Cryptosporidium. When the probe strand contacts a matching strand from the environment, it binds into a double helix, releasing a faint electrical charge that the nanotube conducts to the sensor’s transducer, signaling the presence of the specific pathogens found in the water. Because the sensor contains millions of nanotubes, it is highly sensitive to even minute amounts of its target substance. Tiny, requiring little energy and no laboratory expertise, the sensor is ideal for use in space and, as it turns out, on Earth as well.

Partnership

“Carbon nanotubes are the wonder material of nanotechnology,” says Neil Gordon, president of Early Warning Inc., based in Troy, New York. “The opportunity was ripe to put that technology into a product.” Gordon encountered the director of the Center for Nanotechnology, Meyya Meyyappan, at a number of industry conferences, and the two discussed the possible terrestrial applications of NASA’s biosensor. In 2007, Early Warning exclusively licensed the biosensor from Ames and entered into a Space Act Agreement to support further, joint development of the sensor through 2012.

Product Outcome

Early Warning initially developed a working version of the NASA biosensor calibrated to detect the bacteria strain E. coliO157:H7, known to cause acute gastrointestinal illness. It also detects indicator E. coli, commonly used in water testing. In the process, the company worked out a method for placing multiple sensors on a single wafer, allowing for mass production and cost-effective testing. In April, at the 2009 American Water Works Association “Water Security Congress,” Early Warning launched its commercial Biohazard Water Analyzer, which builds upon the licensed NASA biosensor and can be configured to test for a suite of waterborne pathogens including E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and other bacteria, viruses, and parasitic protozoa. The analyzer uses a biomolecule concentrator—an Early Warning invention—to reduce a 10-liter water sample to 1 milliliter in about 45 minutes. The concentrated sample is then processed and fed to the biosensor. The entire process takes about 2 hours, a drastic improvement over typical laboratory-based water sampling, which can take several days to a week. The sensor operates in the field via a wired or wireless network and without the need for a laboratory or technicians, allowing for rapid, on-the-fly detection and treatment of potentially dangerous organic contaminants.

Early Warning’s analyzer feeds a concentrated water sample to its biosensor, providing rapid pathogen detection.

“The sensor is incredibly sensitive and specific to the type of pathogen it is calibrated to detect in the water,” says Gordon. “Instead of just detecting coliforms in the water that may or may not indicate the presence of pathogens, we will know if there are infectious strains of Salmonella, E. coli, or Giardia that could sicken or even kill vulnerable people if consumed.” (Coliform bacteria levels typically indicate water and food sanitation quality.)

The water analyzer has multiple applications, notes Gordon. Early Warning’s system can monitor recreational water quality at beaches and lakes, which can be contaminated by animal feces, farming activities, and infectious pathogens in human waste. Agricultural companies may use the analyzer to test feed water for cattle, and food and beverage companies may employ the sensor to ensure the purity of water used in their products. Health care organizations have expressed interest in using the analyzer to test water from showers and other potential sources of pathogens like Legionella, which causes the flu-like Legionnaires’ disease.

Early Warning and Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas, are collaborating on sensor enhancements such as improving the safety of imported produce. Since the skins of fruits and vegetables are potential sites of dangerous pathogens, inspectors could collect water sprayed on the produce and, using the analyzer, know within a few hours whether a particular shipment is contaminated. Last year, Kansas State was selected as the home for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, which could also benefit Early Warning.

“We’re eager to show how the private sector, government agencies, and academia can work together to evolve this platform into products that benefit our citizens,” says Gordon. With an aging U.S. water and wastewater infrastructure, increasingly severe weather systems, global travel and food imports affecting the proliferation of disease-causing organisms, and more than 1 billion people worldwide without access to safe water (according to the World Health Organization), the fruits of this partnership may be more necessary than ever.

NASA’s LADEE Has Crashed Into the Moon

Last night, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer impacted the surface of the moon in a controlled crash.

Developed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, LADEE (pronounced laddie) was a $280 million robotic mission to orbit the moon, gathering details about the structure and composition of the lunar atmosphere and determining if dust is lofted into the lunar sky. “It’s bittersweet knowing we have received the final transmission from the LADEE spacecraft after spending years building it in-house at Ames, and then being in constant contact as it circled the moon for the last several months,” LADEE project manager Butler Hine says in a news release.

The vending machine-sized dust probe was launched in September 2013 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It began orbiting the moon in October and gathering science data in November. Scientists hope to use the data to address a long-standing mystery: Was lunar dust, when electrically charged by sunlight, responsible for the pre-sunrise glow seen above the lunar horizon during several Apollo missions?

Earlier this month, LADEE maneuvered its way down to about two kilometers (or a mile) above the moon’s surface — that’s lower than most commercial airplanes fly here. LADEE was actually the first to successfully fly more than 100 orbits at extremely low altitudes. And over its lifetime, LADEE has made the best measurements ever of dust kicked up when micrometeorites slam into the moon.

Another LADEE first, in its short but highly productive career: hosting NASA’s dedicated system for two-way communication using laser instead of radio waves. A pulsed laser beam transmitted data from the moon to Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 Mbps. Then, an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps was transmitted from the ground station back aboard LADEE. “We had a really high rate of data transmission,” Mihaly Horanyi at the University of Colorado, Boulder, tells New Scientist. “You could have watched Netflix on the moon if you wanted to.” Future versions could allow hi-def streaming of videos from space.

But all good things must come to an end. Because LADEE lacked the fuel to maintain a long-term lunar orbit or continue operations, it was intentionally sent into the moon’s surface. On April 11, LADEE performed a final maneuver to ensure a trajectory that’ll allow it to impact the far side of the moon — where we can’t see or communicate with it. On Tuesday, the total lunar eclipse robbed LADEE’s solar panels of their electricity-generating ability and drained its batteries. “It was a nail-biting event,” Hine tells the New York Times. “I’ve never seen that many yellow and red alarms going off simultaneously.” But LADEE survived the cold and darkness (unexpectedly) and made some final measurements.

On April 17 at 10:59 pm Pacific time, Ames researchers confirmed LADEE’s crash, which took place between 9:30 and 10:22 pm. The spacecraft likely broke apart and heated up several hundred degrees (maybe even vaporized) at the surface. Anything that’s left is probably buried in shallow craters. “At the time of impact, LADEE was traveling at a speed of 3,600 miles [around 5,800 kilometers] per hour — about three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet,” LADEE project scientist Rick Elphic says in a news release. “There’s nothing gentle about impact at these speeds — it’s just a question of whether LADEE made a localized craterlet on a hillside or scattered debris across a flat area.” The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team hopes to capture images of the impact site later.

Farewell, LADEE. May you rest in pieces knowing you left your mark.

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Kepler Team Announces Discovery of Earth-Sized Planet in Habitable Zone

Since its launch in the spring of 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has been hunting exoplanets. The holy grail being a planet that is essentially like ours in terms of size, composition, and habitability: an Earth-twin. While we still haven’t found a planet that exactly fits that bill, Kepler has now confirmed the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet in its star’s habitable zone. The announcement was made at a press conference and the findings have been published in Science.

Kepler-186f is about 10% larger than Earth and orbits an M dwarf star around 500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The star is about half of the size and mass of our sun, and it takes Kepler-186f about 130 Earth days to complete a revolution. On the outer edge of the star’s habitable zone, the planet receives about a third of the radiation from its parent star as we do from ours.

Life as we know it requires the presence of liquid water, so a planet with the potential for life would be not too close to the star (which would be too hot and the water would be vapor) yet not too far away (where it would be too cold and the water would be ice). Habitability requires a “Goldilocks Zone” where conditions are just right.

“We know of just one planet where life exists — Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth,” said Elisa Quintana, lead author of the paper. “Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward.”

Co-author Thomas Barclay added: “Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has. Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth.”

Determining the composition of planets out in the habitable zone isn’t as easy as those who are incredibly close to the star, because there isn’t as much radiation from the parent star available to determine what is or isn’t getting absorbed. While previous findings have indicated that Kepler-186f is a rocky planet, further analysis must be done before any definitive conclusions can be made.

Have questions for the scientists? Ask them using #Kepler186f on Twitter, Facebook, or G+. 

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Detectors Ensure Function, Safety of Aircraft Wiring

NASA Technology

A NASA engineer tests wiring in the rear engine compartment of Space Shuttle Discovery. To pinpoint the location of faulty wires, a NASA contractor invented the Standing Wave Reflectometer.

Pedro Medelius waited patiently in his lab at Kennedy Space Center. He had just received word that a colleague was bringing over a cable from a Space Shuttle solid rocket booster to test Medelius’ new invention. Medelius was calm until his colleague arrived—with about 30 other people.

“Talk about testing under pressure,” says Medelius. “There were people there from the Navy, the Air Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration.”

After the group’s arrival, Medelius took a deep breath and connected his Standing Wave Reflectometer (SWR) to the cable. He wiggled the cable around, and the display showed a fault (a short or open circuit in wire) about an inch and a half inside the connector on the cable. His colleague questioned the results, because he had already checked that area on the cable. Medelius used the SWR to check again but got the same result. “That is when we took the cable apart and looked inside,” Medelius says. “Lo and behold, that was exactly where the fault was.”

The impetus for Medelius’ new wire inspection technology came about in 1999 when one of the space shuttles lost power due to a fault somewhere in its more than 200 miles of electrical wiring. “The backup circuit was activated and prevented a major dysfunction, but nevertheless, there was a problem with the wiring,” Medelius describes.

Even though technicians used a device called a multimeter to measure the electrical current to find which wire had a fault, it could not pinpoint exactly where on the wire the fault was located. For that, technicians had to visually inspect the wire.

“Sometimes they would have to remove the whole wire assembly and visually inspect every single wire. It was a very tedious operation because the wires are behind cabinets. They go all over the place in the shuttle,” says Medelius. “NASA needed an instrument capable of telling them exactly where the faults were occurring.”

To meet NASA’s needs for a highly precise device to inspect electrical power bundles, wires, and connectors, Medelius devised the SWR. “It came down to what was affected when a wire is short circuited or opened,” he says. “We worked out a few equations based on physical principles.” The SWR proved very sensitive, and the technology was patented.

Technology Transfer

Kennedy made the technology available for commercial licensing. Corona, California-based Eclypse International was immediately intrigued by the technology, due in part to the 1996 explosion and crash of TWA flight 800. Eclypse had worked with the White House-led Air Transport Safety and Rulemaking Committee on the investigation of the accident, which, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, was most likely caused by a short circuit in its wiring. Chris Teal, marketing director at the company, says, “We were trying to find a technology to test the wiring without being intrusive or destructive.”

After obtaining an exclusive license for the SWR, Eclypse refined the SWR for commercial use by incorporating an easy-to-use keypad and making the device more rugged. “The first version was hard plastic that shattered if you dropped it. We made it tough, so none of the connectors or casing would break if it fell,” says Teal.

Benefits

Originally featured in Spinoff 2005, Eclypse has had many years of success with the NASA technology, which is now in widespread use by the military and commercial airlines, among others. As a small business that started with just 6 employees, Eclypse now employs approximately 30 people.

Eclypse International licensed NASA technology and then commercialized the EXP+ to identify the location of a fault down the path of wiring on aircraft, submarines, sea vessels, and helicopters. Here, a HH-60G Air Force Special Operations Command intercommunications subsystem is tested.

Called ESP+, Eclypse’s spinoff technology takes less than 5 seconds to locate a fault. “It’s the fastest and easiest to use hand-held wire tester available today,” says Teal.

“It is comforting to know that what 
we did helped to make flight safer.”

—Pedro Medelius, 
Kennedy Space Center

Available as a standalone piece of equipment or as part of Eclypse’s Electrical Component Analysis System (ECAS), ESP+ provides step-by-step instructions to guide a user on the type and location of an electrical wiring fault.

“Mechanics who have never touched wiring can now fix it,” says Teal. “All they have to do is start the test, and in a matter of seconds, it will tell them where the fault is within 18 inches. Electrical checks that used to take two folks 8 hours can now be done in 45 minutes with one person.”

According to the company, the US Army purchased 300 ESP+ devices to include in their helicopter battle damage and assessment repair kits. In addition, one of the military programs using ECAS reported a savings of $2.19 million on development costs.

ESP+ is currently employed throughout the United States and abroad to check the health of wiring in commercial and military aircraft, submarines, sea vessels, and even presidential helicopters. A sampling of commercial customers includes Sikorsky, Boeing, Raytheon, Qantas Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, American Airlines, and FedEx. Military customers include the United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps, Australian Defense, the South Korean Army, the Spanish Navy, and Portuguese Air Forces.

In the future, Eclypse plans to promote its technology for routine maintenance of system wiring. “Our core technology and philosophy is to handle the electrical from the date it is put in service to the date of its retirement,” says Teal. The company also aims to attract the interest of networking and mainframe distribution entities and similar complex electrical industries to help ensure normal operations for their electrical wiring.

Today, Medelius says he appreciates seeing how NASA technology helps not only NASA, but everybody—even himself. “I fly a lot, and it is comforting to know that what we did helped to make flight safer. It’s a good feeling, not only as an engineering accomplishment, but from a personal standpoint.”

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Polymers Advance Heat Management Materials for Vehicles

NASA Technology

For 6 years prior to the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program, the shuttles carried an onboard repair kit with a tool for emergency use: two tubes of NOAX, or “good goo,” as some people called it. NOAX flew on all 22 flights following the Columbia accident, and was designed to repair damage that occurred on the exterior of the shuttle.

Bill McMahon, a structural materials engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center says NASA needed a solution for the widest range of possible damage to the shuttle’s exterior thermal protection system. “NASA looked at several options in early 2004 and decided on a sealant. Ultimately, NOAX performed the best and was selected,” he says.

To prove NOAX would work effectively required hundreds of samples manufactured at Marshall and Johnson—and a concerted effort from various NASA field centers. Johnson Space Center provided programmatic leadership, testing, tools, and crew training; Glenn Research Center provided materials analysis; Langley Research Center provided test support and led an effort to perform large patch repairs; Ames Research Center provided additional testing; and Marshall provided further testing and the site of NOAX manufacturing.

Although the sealant never had to be used in an emergency situation, it was tested by astronauts on samples of reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) during two shuttle missions. (RCC is the thermal material on areas of the shuttle that experience the most heat, such as the nose cone and wing leading edges.) The material handled well on orbit, and tests showed the NOAX patch held up well on RCC.

Technology Transfer

While NASA funded the full-scale development of NOAX, the sealant was actually invented by Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK). Under NASA funding, ATK contracted with Starfire Systems Inc., a manufacturer of polymer-to-ceramic technology based in Schenectady, New York, to supply the unique polymer material that was incorporated into NOAX.

Called SMP-10, Starfire’s polymer was designed to convert into a ceramic at high temperatures. McMahon describes, “As it heated above 1,500 °F it would start to convert over to ceramic. As a ceramic, NOAX could take much higher temperatures, allowing it to seal during the shuttle’s re-entry.”

According to Darren Welson, director of technology at Starfire, SMP-10 was formulated and processed for incorporation into NOAX, which laid the groundwork for Starfire to achieve a repeatable process for a reliable product. “Thanks to our experience working with ATK and NASA, we were able to demonstrate and test SMP-10 for aerospace, military, and commercial applications. The applications have grown and matured as a result of the ATK and NASA work,” he says.

Benefits

In looking for ways to make SMP-10 less expensive for commercial use, Starfire developed StarPCS for high temperature applications on Earth. Today, the company manufactures a family of StarPCS products for lightweight components that need to withstand extreme temperatures. “They share a common chemistry but are different based on the application,” says Welson.

The StarPCS family of products provides benefits for heat management in the military, aerospace, aviation, and automotive markets. According to the company, customers in general aviation are experimenting with StarPCS for various aircraft components.

Al Cornell, director of sales and business development at Starfire, says domestic and foreign auto manufacturers are testing StarPCS for passenger vehicles. “It can be run hotter and require less cooling than metallic counterparts. It also offers weight-saving and performance handling benefits,” he says.

Starfire Systems Inc. manufactured a unique polymer for the sealant for the Space Shuttle. A formula incorporating the polymer is now being used in test platforms for a new exhaust management design for Formula 1 race cars.

StarPCS formulas are also being tested for heat shields in vehicles with extremely hot engines. According to the company, the material has already been qualified and is going forward for implementation for this application. “The thermal properties allow the material to be a very good insulator in race cars,” finds Cornell. “In this particular case, the composite can protect the passenger from the hot engine components.”

Specifically, Cornell says StarPCS is being used in the test platforms for Formula 1 race cars. The teams are currently looking for a new exhaust management design to divert exhaust by routing it through body panels. It would use the aerodynamic suction to pull the gases out of the engine faster and allow a 1–3 percent increase in horsepower. The problem, says Cornell, is that manufacturers have not found a way to do it without burning the carbon fiber body of the vehicle. “It’s a technology race for all the teams to get the same technology in their cars to have the same performance,” he says. “StarPCS could potentially be used for such an application.”

Auto manufacturers outside of racing are also looking for alternative materials for heat management in turbo chargers. Cornell says manufacturers want to make exhaust pipes out of something other than metal so the pipe can withstand higher temperatures. “The higher the temperature bleed, the more efficient the turbo charger,” he says. “This is the same idea as the Formula 1 application to manage an incredible amount of heat.”

Even though NASA no longer uses the innovative solution for space shuttle repairs, the Agency is incorporating SMP-10 into some of the safety components for Orion, NASA’s next multi-purpose crew vehicle.

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Sensors Enable Plants to Text Message Farmers

NASA Technology

Long-term human spaceflight means long-term menu planning. Since every pound of cargo comes with a steep price tag, NASA has long researched technologies and techniques to allow astronauts to grow their own food, both on the journey and in some cases at their destination. Sustainable food technologies designed for space have resulted in spinoffs that improve the nutrition, safety, and durability of food on Earth.

There are of course tradeoffs involved in making astronauts part-time farmers. Any time spent tending plants is time that can’t be spent elsewhere: collecting data, exploring, performing routine maintenance, or sleeping. And as scarce as time is for astronauts, resources are even more limited. It is highly practical, therefore, to ensure that farming in space is as automated and precise as possible.

Technology Transfer

By measuring electrical pulses, AgriHouse’s sensors can determine several characteristics important to plant health. The sensors can remain attached through wind and rain while leaving the plant unharmed.

In the early 2000s, a NASA cooperative agreement for developing hardware for biological experiments in space was made available to Hans Seelig, at the time a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder and an employee of BioServe Space Technologies, a nonprofit, NASA-sponsored research partnership center located at the university and at the time connected to the Space Product Development Office at Marshall Space Flight Center. As part of his research, Seelig studied the relationship between plant leaf rigidity and its water content, and whether such data could be directly measured using sensors. “No device was available that could measure leaf thickness continually, so I built a prototype sensor that measured thickness by way of electrical pulses,” he says.

Seelig hypothesized that sensor-based watering could eliminate a significant amount of guesswork in farming and free up time and resources that could be applied elsewhere. “Astronauts are not supposed to spend their days weeding, watering, and the like, so we wanted to investigate technologies that would make a closed ecological life support system more efficient.”

Following the cooperative agreement, Seelig looked to secure additional funding to move the technology forward. For help, he turned to Richard Stoner, an entrepreneur, inventor, and plant researcher who had partnered with BioServe in the past. Stoner’s previous NASA-related projects included an organic biopesticide suitable for space and aeroponic technology to grow plants without the use of soil (Spinoff 2006, 2008). The partnership between BioServe and Stoner’s company, Berthoud, Colorado-based AgriHouse Brands Ltd. resulted in an experiment to see whether the sensor could be used successfully to trigger automated irrigation. With the sensors, they grew healthy plants while reducing water use between 25 and 45 percent compared to traditional methods.

The next step in product development was to perform a field test on a large scale, which AgriHouse conducted in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture. Stoner says the test, though not terribly practical, proved effective: “We had to run thousands of feet of cable down the road and to each of the leaf sensors. It was a huge effort, but for the first time in human history, you had plants in a field telling the farmer how much water they had and when they needed more.”

Looking at the data, Stoner and his colleagues determined that the plants—irrigated using traditional methods—had actually received more water than was necessary. Stoner explains that in the West, farmers typically water their crops at certain set times throughout the growing season. “In our test, we set four watering dates, but what we discovered by looking at the data is that some rain that fell before one of those dates made the irrigation unnecessary. The plants simply didn’t need to be watered—though we couldn’t have known that without the sensors in place.”

Benefits

With the technology demonstrated, AgriHouse soon after commercialized the product and now sells several models of the sensor. Currently, its primary market is researchers and scientists. “This is a new, emerging science, and it’s still in its infancy,” says Stoner. “We’ve got a long way to go, but one day farmers will be able to pick up a pack of these devices like candy from a convenience store.”

AgriHouse’s line of patented leaf sensors are thin clips, smaller than a postage stamp, that easily attach to the plant, adhering to the leaf structure without damaging the leaf or falling off in the presence of natural movements, wind, or inclement weather. The sensors transmit data (either through a wire or using radio waves) on leaf turgidity, which indicates plant water levels as well as the plant’s general health.

In a partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture, AgriHouse conducted the first large-scale test of its leaf sensors on the field shown here. To Richard Stoner’s surprise, the plants were actually overwatered during the test—information that only came to light thanks to the sensors. The technology could have an impact in the West, where water use is closely monitored.

Right now the data is all transmitted to a user’s computer, and the system can send text messages calling attention to particular crops that need water. Stoner envisions text message alerts becoming a common tool among farmers in the future, which could be combined with precision irrigation systems to eliminate a large amount of guesswork.

Because the sensors’ primary commercial benefit is in preventing overwatering, Stoner says they would be especially useful in the West, where water is sometimes scarce and farmers rely on underground aquifers to meet their needs. “This technology has the potential to reduce water spending in agricultural applications substantially,” says Seelig, now a professor in Germany. “The importance of this becomes clear when one considers the relative scarcity of irrigation water in many places in the United States and worldwide. Imagine the reduction in consumption that would be possible if our greenhouse results were extrapolated to the rest of the world.”

The spinoff has also given Stoner an opportunity to work on the next generation of the technology with students at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. “These students are committed to finding the proper business models to make this NASA funded leaf sensor an economic reality,” he says, “and they’re very inspired by it.”

Students from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs have also partnered with AgriHouse; Mark Wickert, a professor at the university, says, “Students are happy to be contributing to the knowledge base of what NASA originally funded. They fully understand the implications of the leaf sensor technology in addressing the world’s food and fresh water problems.”

Whether or not AgriHouse’s sensors ever make it to low Earth orbit and beyond, this NASA-derived technology is likely to be employed on Earth to conserve resources, save money, and put farmers in closer contact with the crops they grow.

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Need an electronic timecard system? NASA has the code for you

Over the years, NASA has famously invented a number of technologies that have since entered into many of our everyday lives. For instance, NASA had a hand in the invention of insulin pumps, scratch-resistant lenses and memory foam(though not, despite what you may have heard, in the invention of Tang, Velcro or Teflon; it just helped make them popular). We may all soon benefit again from NASA brainpower thanks to the recent release of lots and lots of software code developed by and for the space agency.

 

 

 

Last week, NASA’s Technology Transfer Program published its Software Catalog, which documents code for over 1,000 projects which is being made available to the public. The catalog documents what the code does, what (if any) restrictions are placed on it (some code is released to the general public, some for use by U.S. citizens only, some only for use on behalf of the government) and how to get it. In most cases, you can’t just download this code; you have to request access to it explaining what you plan to use it for.

Of course, you’re probably thinking, “Cool, but this doesn’t really affect me, since I’m not designing a spacecraft to go into orbit or to the moon.” While it’s true that lots of this code has to do with pretty NASA-y type of stuff like aeronautics, life support systems and propulsion (e.g. Advanced Ducted Propfan Analysis Code, which “solves tightly coupled internal/external flows through future-concept short-duct turbofan engines”) , there’s also quite a bit of other code that may be of interest to your business or for personal use. 

I took a spin through the catalog, which is currently only available in PDF form but will reportedly be made available via a searchable database and online repository, and identified some of the more mundane code that may actually be of use or interest.

Business Tools

Use these NASA-developed tools to help with the day-to-day tasks of running your company:

 

• Electronic Timecard System – “The Electronic Timecard System can be utilized by any business or organization wishing to streamline its payroll department procedures. The automated system minimizes the consumption of paper and eliminates the need for weekly pick-up and delivery of time sheets. The tool also simplifies the daily recording of time worked by employees, and it allows employees to “sign” their “timecards” electronically at the end of each week. Supervisors can review an employee’s electronic timecards daily and sign them electronically.”

• Goal Performance Evaluation System  – “The Goal Performance Evaluation System (GPES) is an innovative interactive software application that implements, validates, and evaluates an organization’s performance by the achievements of its employees. The tool has been used for strategic planning, employee performance management, and center-wide communication. The system is Web-based and uses a relational database to host information.

• Can I Buy – “The Can I Buy tool automates processes used to request and approve procurements. The software allows registered users to create, submit, un-submit, and delete purchase requests. Different capabilities are provided depending on a person’s ‘role.’ Privileged roles include branch head, assistant branch head, secretary, resource analyst, credit card specialist, and tool administrator. Email is the medium of communication in the system.”

 

Developer/admin tools

Software developers and system administrators may find some useful tools in the catalog such as:

 

• Ballast: Balancing Load Across Systems – “Ballast is a tool for balancing user load across Secure Shell Handler (SSH) servers. The system includes a load-balancing client, a lightweight data server, scripts for collecting system load, and scripts for analyzing user behavior. Because Ballast is invoked as part of the SSH login process, it has access to user names. This capability, which is not available in traditional approaches, enables Ballast to perform user-specific load balancing. In addition, Ballast is easy to install, induces near-zero overhead, and has fault-tolerant features in its architectures that will eliminate single points of failure.”

• Multi-threaded Copy Program – “MCP is a high-performance file copy utility that achieves performance gains through parallelization. Multiple files and parts of single files are processed in parallel using multiple threads on multiple processors. The program employs the OpenMP and MPI programming models.”

• NASA World Wind Java (WWJ) Software Development Kit (SDK) and Web Mapping Services – “NASA World Wind is an intuitive software application supporting the interactive exploration of a variety of data presented within a geospatial context. The technology offers a 3D graphics user experience with seamless, integrated access to a variety of online data sources via open-standards protocols.”

 

Fun stuff

NASA has developed some tools which may not be particularly useful to most of us, but which still sound like they’d be fun to tinker around with, such as:

 

• Spacecraft Docking Simulation – “This simulation is a simplified version of the rendezvous and docking scenario performed by Space Shuttle astronauts docking at the International Space Station (ISS).”

• NASA Forecast Model Web – “NFMW reads weather forecast models outputs; subsets the data to the region of interest; interpolates the data to the specified size; generates a visualization of the data using colors, contour lines, or arrows; and sends the visualization to the client.”

• Station Spacewalk Game App – “This video game features simulations of Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) conducted by NASA astronauts on missions to the International Space Station.”

 

While none of the offerings in the catalog may have the impact of, say, cochlear implants, it seems like there are still useful nuggets here. Or maybe you just want to contribute back to NASA by helping them out with their code? Either way, take a look and have fun!

[Source]

4 amazing things Nasa invented (and 4 you think it did)

Nasa is everywhere.

Over the past 50 years, the US government space agency has built an awful lot of stuff for, well, space. But with its $17 billion (£10 billion) annual budget, it has also done quite a bit of research and development in other areas, and even its space gear managed to influence so many other things down here on earth.

The liquid cooled space clothing worn by lunar astronauts in the ’70s has been adapted to help burn-victims. In the ’80s, the agency helped develop a lightweight breathing system for firefighters. And more recently, biologists modified the star-tracking algorithms used by the Hubble Telescope to track fish and polar bears. “The list goes on and on, but not many people know about it,” says Daniel Lockney, Technology Transfer Program Executive with Nasa’s Office of the Chief Technologist.

Lockney is the guy you go to if you want access to Nasa’s space-aged technologies. This week, he and his colleagues released a  catalog of about 1,000 Nasa software projects, trying to make it easier for the agency’s research to trickle down to the rest of us. And in the near future, he plans on launching an online software database and repository that will grease the wheels even more.

He’s proud of the work he and his colleagues do, and he loves to talk about Nasa’s long history. When people learn what Lockney does, they often tell him about their favorite Nasa inventions. That can be fun. But sometimes, it’s also a bit of an odd experience. People often name things that weren’t actually invented at Nasa. “It happens all the time,” Lockney says. 

So, the list below provides a kind of quiz. There are eight technologies, four of them came out of Nasa’s tech transfer program. And four did not. Can you tell the myths from the Nasa miracles?

Space Rose

OK, maybe this isn’t exactly a Miracle, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. Back in the 1990s, NASA teamed up with a company called International Flavors and Fragrances to grow a rose in space. The scent of that rose was synthesized and then bottled in a “out-of-this-world” perfume called Zen. Answer: Miracle

Velcro

Yes, NASA has used Velcro in its missions. No, they didn’t invent it. A swiss engineer named George de Mestral came up with it in the late 1940s. Answer: Myth

Baby formula

NASA once gave a contract to Marietta Laboratories to experiment with microalgae as a kind of three-in-one food source, oxygen engine, and an organic waste disposal toolkit. The space food work didn’t pan out, but Marietta would give us the technology to make nutritional supplements for infant formula. Answer: NASA Miracle

Tang

Tang’s NASA link dates back to John Glenn’s 1962 Friendship 7 mission. The storied astronaut did drink Tang in space, but it was invented for consumers, not the space program. Answer: Myth

Truck fairings

It all started when Edwin Saltzman was riding his bike. Whenever big trucks passed, he’d get hit with a mighty wallop of air. Since he worked at NASA, which has made a study of wind resistance on aircraft, it was pretty easy to design a more aerodynamic truck. And by the late ’70s his designs were everywhere. Answer: Miracle

Teflon

Lockney says that he gets this one all the time. NASA uses Teflon in heat shields, in space suits, and even in cargo holds. But Teflon was invented in 1938. That’s long before NASA was around. Answer: Myth

Space pen

In the 1960s, an inventor named Paul Fisher came up with a remarkable pen that would work in zero-gravity. NASA used them in the Apollo 7 mission. The pen was a success, but when Fisher came up with it, he wasn’t working for NASA. Answer: NASA Myth

Smartphone cameras

In the 1990’s, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory team was looking for ways to shrink cameras down for interplanetary travel. They came up with the camera-on-a-chip, also known as the CMOS sensor. Today, CMOS sensors are found in most of the world’s camera phones. Answer: NASA Miracle

[Source]

5 NASA Inventions You Won’t Believe

 

Nanoceramics Cure Cancer, Make Hair Shiny

While working as a NASA scientist specializing in nano-materials (which are 10,000 times smaller than a human hair), Dr. Dennis Morrison developed nano-ceramics, which could be formed into tiny balloons called micro-capsules. These little balloons could be filled with cancer-fighting drugs and injected into solid tumors.

Where, you’re wondering, does space come into this process? In order to create the microscopic membrane around the liquid drugs, the micro-capsules had to be formed in low-Earth orbit. Dr. Morrison’s ceramic nano-particles contained metals that would react when the patient was subjected to a magnetic field, like what’s used in an MRI diagnostic machine. The capsules would melt, and the drugs would be released to fight the cancerous tumor.

It turns out that Dr. Morrison’s ceramic-magnetic particles were good for more than fighting tumors — they could also fight frizz. When incorporated into Farouk Systems’s hair styling iron and heated, the nano-particles released ions that made hair smooth and shiny.

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Reflective Coatings Save Skylab, Manatees

When the Skylab space-based laboratory was set in position in 1973, a solar panel fell off during the launch, which kept another solar panel from deploying properly once in orbit. These panels had to be replaced — and fast. NASA turned to National Metalizing, a firm it had worked with previously, to create a new panel that would be ready to go into space in 10 days.

National Metalizing had originally developed reflective materials for NASA in the 1950s, so it was able to deliver the necessary thin plastic material coated in vaporized aluminum in time. The material can deflect or conserve radiant energy, depending on which is required — to keep something cool or to warm it up. This flexible reflective material proved so useful, it was inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1996.

A former director of the company took this technology, which has been in the public domain for decades, and started a new company, Advanced Flexible Materials. The same materials used to protect Skylab now protects marathon runners from hypothermia after a race, as well as manatees, which can suffer from hypothermia at 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 degrees Celsius), while they’re being tagged by researchers.

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Deformable Mirrors — Not for the Fun House

Any space nerd who remembers the Hubble Space Telescope launch in 1990 remembers seeing pictures and news videos of the giant mirrors being polished to perfection — or as close as humans can get, anyway. Minor flaws in the surface could obscure important discoveries.

Hubble and its amazing sheets of optical glass paved the way for the Terrestrial Planet Finder and its deformable mirrors, which will have 100 times the imaging power of its predecessor when NASA launches it in the near future. Deformable mirrors don’t need to be absolutely perfect the first time out — they can adjust their positions to correct for blurring or distortion, which in space can be caused by temperature, lack of gravity or getting bumped during launch.

Deformable mirrors are not so new. They were proposed by astronomers in the 1950s and developed by the United States Air Force in the 1970s. Each system consists of the deformable mirror itself, a sensor that measures any aberrations it finds hundreds of times a second, and a small computer that receives the sensor’s readings and tells the mirror how to move to correct for the problem.

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Nanotubes Look for Life on Mars

No matter what the movies have been telling us for decades, Martians are not likely to be humanoid, sentient beings. They won’t have ray guns or space suits. If there is life on Mars, it will be very, very small, and probably not too far up the evolution ladder. Pity.

In order to find such small forms of life, small detectors were necessary. Enter nano-tubes, which is a fun word to say. Scientists at the Ames Research Center developed carbon nano-tubes, each 1/50,000th the diameter of a human hair, that can conduct heat and electricity. Each nano-tube is tipped with single strands of nucleic acid (the “NA” in “DNA”) from a microorganism. When it comes into contact with a matching strand, the pair form a double helix and send a faint electrical charge through the nano-tubes. This charge is how anyone looking at the bio-sensor, as the tiny apparatus is called, knows life has been detected.

Sadly, no life has yet been found on Mars, but these bio-sensors are being put to good use on Earth. Tipping the nano-tubes with waterborne pathogens like E. Coli and Cryptosporidium means an analyst can get results from the bio-sensor in the field within two hours — no lab work required.

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Mars Missions Create Tough Armor

When the Mars Pathfinder (1997) and Mars Rover (2004) missions landed on the Red Planet, they landed hard. These were unmanned missions, of course, with some guidance from engineers on Earth — but not as much as they’d like. The equipment was designed to crash land, gently, with a cage of airbags to cushion the fall from space.

Obviously, not just any airbag would work. NASA required the material to be lightweight and able to withstand extreme temperatures for the interplanetary flight. The material also had to be tough enough to keep the airbags inflated as the whole apparatus bounced along the rocky, sharp surface of Mars.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with Warwick Mills, the company that had woven the reentry parachutes for the Apollo missions in the 1960s, to create a layered, coated, liquid-crystal polyester fiber that would fit the bill.

Warwick took the technology and ran with it, creating TurtleSkin protective gear that can withstand punctures from needles, knives and even bullets. The flexibility of the tightly woven fabric, which helped keep the Mars landers safe, now also keeps military and police officers safe.