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6 Ways You Are Safer Thanks to NASA Technology

By now everyone knows that we are to thank for the memory foam in your mattress and the camera in your cell phone. (Right? Right.)

But our technology is often also involved behind the scenes—in ways that make the products we use daily safer and stronger, and in some cases, that can even save lives.

Here are some examples from this year’s edition of Spinoff, our yearly roundup of “space in your life”:

Impact Testing

What happens to your car bumper in an accident? When does it crumple and when does it crack? And are all bumpers coming off the assembly line created equal?

These types of questions are incredibly important when designing a safe car, and one technology that helps almost every U.S. automobile manufacturer find answers is something we helped develop when we had similar questions about the Space Shuttle.

Before flying again after the Columbia disaster in 2003, we had to be sure we understood what went wrong and how to prevent it from ever happening again. We worked with Trilion, Inc. to develop a system using high-speed cameras and software to analyze every impact—from the one that actually happened on the Shuttle to any others we could imagine—and design fixes.

Finding Survivors

We’re pretty good at finding things you can’t see with the naked eye—from distant exoplanets to water on Mars.

But there are also plenty of uses for that know-how on Earth.

One example that has already saved lives: locating heartbeats under debris.

Engineers at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory adapted technology first devised to look for gravity fluctuations to create FINDER, which stands for Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response and can detect survivors through dense rubble.

We have licensed the technology to two companies, including R4, and it has already been used in natural disaster responses, including after earthquakes in Nepal, Mexico City, Ecuador, and after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Fighting Forest Fires

As we have seen this year with devastating wildfires in California, forest fires can spread incredibly quickly.

Knowing when to order an evacuation, where to send firefighters, and how to make every other decision—all amid a raging inferno—depends on having the most up-to-date information as quickly as possible.

Using our expertise in remote sensing and communicating from space, we helped the U.S. Forest Service make its process faster and more reliable, so the data from airborne sensors gets to decision makers on the front line and at the command center in the blink of an eye.

Safer, Germ-Free Ambulances 

When paramedics come racing into a home, the last thing anybody is worrying about is where the ambulance was earlier that morning. A device we helped create ensures you won’t have to.

AMBUstat creates a fog that sterilizes every surface in an ambulance in minutes, so any bacteria, viruses or other contaminants won’t linger on to infect the next patient.

This technology works its magic through the power of atomic oxygen—the unpaired oxygen atoms that are common in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. We’ve had to learn about these atoms to devise ways to ensure they won’t destroy our spacecraft or harm astronauts, but here, we were able to use that knowledge to direct that destructive power at germs.

Air Filters 

Did you know the air we breathe inside buildings is often up to 10 times more polluted than the air outdoors?

Put the air under a microscope and it’s not pretty, but a discovery we made in the 1990s can make a big impact.

We were working on a way to clear a harmful chemical that accumulates around plants growing on a spacecraft, and it turned out to also neutralize bacteria, viruses, and mold and eliminate volatile organic compounds.

Now air purifiers using this technology are deployed in hospital operating rooms, restaurant kitchens, and even major baseball stadiums to improve air quality and keep everyone healthier. Oh, and you can buy one for your house, too.

Driverless Cars 

Car companies are moving full-speed ahead to build the driverless cars of the not-so-distant future. Software first created to help self-learning robots navigate on Mars may help keep passengers and pedestrians safer once those cars hit the road. The software creates an artificially intelligent “brain” for a car (or drone, for that matter) that can automatically identify and differentiate between cars, trucks, pedestrians, cyclists, and more, helping ensure the car doesn’t endanger any of them. 

So, now that you know a few of the spinoff technologies that we helped develop, you can look for them throughout your day. Visit our page to learn about more spinoff technologies: https://spinoff.nasa.gov Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

Answer Time with NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a NASA astronaut? On Thursday, Oct. 29, NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson will answer your questions! She’ll explain how it takes the NASA Village to help train for her mission to space, what the challenges of living in space are and what it’s like to be a NASA astronaut.

Enter your questions here. The Answer Time begins at 3 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 29.

Fun facts about NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson:

Astronaut Whitson was selected as an Astronaut Candidate in April 1996, and started training in August of the same year.

After completing two years of training and evaluation, she served as the lead for the Crew Test Support Team in Russia from 1998 to 1999.

Astronaut Whitson completed two six-month tours of duty aboard the International Space Station.

She has accumulated 377 days in space between two missions, which is the most for any woman.

Astronaut Whitson has performed a total of six career spacewalks, adding up to 39 hours and 46 minutes! She is also one of only a handful of people to perform spacewalks in both Russian and US spacesuits.

She is scheduled to launch in late 2016 as part of the Expedition 50/51.

Firsts:

Science Officer of the International Space Station

Female Commander for the International Space Station

Female to serve as Chief of the Astronaut Office

Follow her on social media to see how it takes a NASA Village to train her for her upcoming mission: Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. 

Planets: As Seen by Voyager

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before starting their journey toward interstellar space. Here you’ll find some of those images, including “The Pale Blue Dot” – famously described by Carl Sagan – and what are still the only up-close images of Uranus and Neptune.

These twin spacecraft took some of the very first close-up images of these planets and paved the way for future planetary missions to return, like the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, Cassini at Saturn and New Horizons at Pluto.

Jupiter

Photography of Jupiter began in January 1979, when images of the brightly banded planet already exceeded the best taken from Earth. They took more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites. 

Findings:

Erupting volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, which has 100 times the volcanic activity of Earth. 

Better understanding of important physical, geological, and atmospheric processes happening in the planet, its satellites and magnetosphere.

Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere with dozens of interacting hurricane-like storm systems.

Saturn

The Saturn encounters occurred nine months apart, in November 1980 and August 1981. The two encounters increased our knowledge and altered our understanding of Saturn. The extended, close-range observations provided high-resolution data far different from the picture assembled during centuries of Earth-based studies.

Findings:

Saturn’s atmosphere is almost entirely hydrogen and helium.

Subdued contrasts and color differences on Saturn could be a result of more horizontal mixing or less production of localized colors than in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

An indication of an ocean beneath the cracked, icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa. 

Winds blow at high speeds in Saturn. Near the equator, the Voyagers measured winds about 1,100 miles an hour.

Uranus

The Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. At its closest, the spacecraft came within 50,600 miles of Uranus’s cloud tops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus.

Findings:

Revealed complex surfaces indicative of varying geologic pasts.

Detected 11 previously unseen moons.

Uncovered the fine detail of the previously known rings and two newly detected rings.

Showed that the planet’s rate of rotation is 17 hours, 14 minutes.

Found that the planet’s magnetic field is both large and unusual.

Determined that the temperature of the equatorial region, which receives less sunlight over a Uranian year, is nevertheless about the same as that at the poles.

Neptune

Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe the planet Neptune in the summer of 1989. Passing about 3,000 miles above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 25,000 miles from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft had the opportunity to study.

Findings: 

Discovered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot

Found that the planet has strong winds, around 1,000 miles per hour

Saw geysers erupting from the polar cap on Neptune’s moon Triton at -390 degrees Fahrenheit

Solar System Portrait

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. 

The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.

From Voyager’s great distance, Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” - Carl Sagan

Both spacecraft will continue to study ultraviolet sources among the stars, and their fields and particles detectors will continue to search for the boundary between the Sun's influence and interstellar space. The radioisotope power systems will likely provide enough power for science to continue through 2025, and possibly support engineering data return through the mid-2030s. After that, the two Voyagers will continue to orbit the center of the Milky Way.

Learn more about the Voyager spacecraft HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Travel Posters of Fantastic Excursions

What would the future look like if people were regularly visiting to other planets and moons? These travel posters give a glimpse into that imaginative future. Take a look and choose your destination:

The Grand Tour

Our Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets for a grand tour of the solar system. The twin spacecraft revealed details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – using each planet’s gravity to send them on to the next destination.

Mars

Our Mars Exploration Program seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of the Red Planet and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration that will someday be celebrated as “historic sites.”

Earth

There’s no place like home. Warm, wet and with an atmosphere that’s just right, Earth is the only place we know of with life – and lots of it. Our Earth science missions monitor our home planet and how it’s changing so it can continue to provide a safe haven as we reach deeper into the cosmos.

Venus

The rare science opportunity of planetary transits has long inspired bold voyages to exotic vantage points – journeys such as James Cook’s trek to the South Pacific to watch Venus and Mercury cross the face of the sun in 1769. Spacecraft now allow us the luxury to study these cosmic crossings at times of our choosing from unique locales across our solar system.

Ceres

Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the sun. It is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with an equatorial diameter of about 965 kilometers. After being studied with telescopes for more than two centuries, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to be explored by a spacecraft, when our Dawn probe arrived in orbit in March 2015. Dawn’s ongoing detailed observations are revealing intriguing insights into the nature of this mysterious world of ice and rock.

Jupiter

The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth’s, and they form a glowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet. 

Enceladus

The discovery of Enceladus’ icy jets and their role in creating Saturn’s E-ring is one of the top findings of the Cassini mission to Saturn. Further Cassini discoveries revealed strong evidence of a global ocean and the first signs of potential hydrothermal activity beyond Earth – making this tiny Saturnian moon one of the leading locations in the search for possible life beyond Earth.

Titan

Frigid and alien, yet similar to our own planet billions of years ago, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan has a thick atmosphere, organic-rich chemistry and surface shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. Our Cassini orbiter was designed to peer through Titan’s perpetual haze and unravel the mysteries of this planet-like moon.

Europa

Astonishing geology and the potential to host the conditions for simple life making Jupiter’s moon Europa a fascinating destination for future exploration. Beneath its icy surface, Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earth’s oceans. Tugging and flexing from Jupiter’s gravity generates enough heat to keep the ocean from freezing.

You can download free poster size images of these thumbnails here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

We’re honored that New Horizon’s image of Pluto was recognized as one of 2015’s top 10 photos by @timemagazine. 

TIME’s Top 10 Photos of 2015. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Each photograph, carefully culled from thousands and presented here unranked, reflects a unique and powerful point of view that represents the best of photojournalism this year. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 2015 gave us the ever picture of Pluto, made by @NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. The high-resolution color image was taken more than nine years after the two cameras that shot it left Earth in the fastest spacecraft ever launched into space. “This is really the completion of a 50-year quest to explore all of the planets in our solar system,” says photographer Alan Stern (@alanstern). “NASA began under President Kennedy and finished under President Obama. I believe that 100 years from now, this image will be an icon from the year 2015.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Read more from each #photographer at time.lightbox.com. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #topten #bestof2015 #pluto #space http://ift.tt/1O7fKGW

Is there any other way to actually look at the eclipse (besides television/streams) without using the special eclipse glasses?

Unfortunately, you can not directly look at the eclipse without the proper eye protection https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety. But there are lots of fun indirect methods that you can use. The GIF shows how you can make a pin hole projector with your hands. We also have patterns for 3D printers to make your own pin hole projector in the shape of the US or your state https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/2d3d-printable-pinhole-projectors

Meet America’s new astronauts! These 12 humans have been selected as part of our 2017 astronaut class and will report for duty at our Johnson Space Center in August. 

Get to know each of them here: https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/161552645129/meet-americas-newastronauts 

Anonymous asked:

What is the best about being mission control?

Build it. Test it. Then, Fly it.

Hundreds of pieces of rockets, rocket engines, boosters, space capsules, launch structures and more have been built, tested and prepared to take us on our Journey to Mars. Across the country, America’s space program is hard at work to launch the Orion space capsule on its first uncrewed flight atop the powerful Space Launch System in 2018.  

But enough of the artist concepts, let’s take a look at the real components being made across the country to prepare for this milestone:

Orion Spacecraft

From testing individual bracket strength to space flight tests, the Orion team is testing every component and subsystem of the spacecraft to ensure crew safety, operational reliability and backup systems are built into the spacecraft from the ground up. To date, hundreds of tests have been conducted across the program to verify and validate that Orion’s design, manufacturing and systems integration meet the rigorous requirements for safe human space exploration.

Orion engineers have subjected the spacecraft to deafening sound blasts, Earthquake-like vibrations and hurricane-force winds in preparation for Orion’s next flight. Large structures such as Orion’s crew and service modules were tested at Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Facility in Littleton, Colorado, and our Glenn Research Center’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. Motor and engine tests have been conducted at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility in Sacramento, California, and Orbital ATK’s facilities in Promontory, Utah, and Elkton, Maryland.

Water impact testing of Orion’s landing capabilities were conducted at our Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and the capsule’s massive parachute system has been tested in various landing scenarios at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Final assembly, integration and pre-flight testing will take place at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Space Launch System

Towering more than 320 feet, the Space Launch System will be the world’s most powerful rocket. Consisting of a core stage and two boosters, RS-25 engines, and the software to power it all, the initial configuration will provide 15 percent more thrust at launch than the Saturn V rocket and carry more than three times the mass of the Space Shuttle. When complete, we’ll be ready to fire up the largest and most powerful rocket ever built on it’s inaugural launch.

At our Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, a talented crew of humans with the latest in machinery is building SLS’s core stage. The core stage is the structural backbone of SLS that stores cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that feed the vehicle’s four RS-25 engines. 

For two monumental minutes in June, the SLS solid rocket boosters fired up in an amazing display of power as engineers verified their designs in the last full-scale test before SLS’s first flight. The smoke and fire may last only two minutes, but engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Orbital ATK in Promontory, Utah, prepared weeks — even months — in advance for that test. 

Launch Site

At our Kennedy Space Center in Florida, teams are hard at work transforming the historic Vehicle Assembly Building for the launches of tomorrow. Like a stairway to the heavens, these upgrades include the building and installation of platforms to access the new Space Launch System rocket. 

Before SLS roars into deep space from Launch Pad 39B, our Ground Systems program continues making significant upgrades and modifications to the historic launch pad to accommodate the new rocket’s shape and size. 

To make room for this new generation of rockets, workers took down the gantry that stood in support of the Space Shuttle program for 30 years and replaced it with, well, not much really. But that was the idea. Whenever SLS heads out to the pad in the future, it's going to bring its support structure with it. With that in mind, Pad 39B will provide all the fluids, electrical, and communications services to the launch platform.

All of this work is essential to get SLS flight ready before it’s maiden voyage and is an important step on our Journey to Mars.

Next Steps

The work happening across the country is preparing us for the first flight of SLS and Orion in 2018. That first, uncrewed test flight is critical to paving the way for future flights that will carry astronauts to deep space, including on a journey to Mars.

Ultimately, the SLS maiden flight will help us prepare for future human missions. During this flight, currently designated Exploration Mission-1, the spacecraft will travel thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of about a three-week mission.

It will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

So Close, So Far: See Juno’s first orbit of Jupiter in this amateur-created JunoCam “marble movie.” 

Credit: NASA/JPL/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt