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From Racing Suits to Robotic Gloves: How to Gear Up with NASA Technology

Did you know you are surrounded by NASA technology? From your apartment building to the doctor’s office, and even in your cellphone camera, there is more space in your life than you think!

In the latest edition of Spinoff, we are introducing dozens of new ways NASA technology could cross your path. Whether you need an extra “hand” on the production line or a weatherproof jacket, check out how to gear up with technology made for space.

Grip-Strengthening Glove

Robots are crucial to exploring space and other planets – they could even support astronauts and form the advance party for places humans have yet to reach. But the human machine is hard to replicate.

A collaboration with General Motors helped us build Robonaut 2 – and the design for this robot’s hands has been adapted into a robotic glove that helps manufacturing employees, such as automobile workers, reduce injuries and improve quality control.

The Swedish company Bioservo used the Robo-Glove technology to create the world’s first industrial-strength robotic glove for factory workers who perform repetitive manual tasks.

The Ironhand glove adds force to the user’s grip with artificial tendons and pressure sensors on the palm and the fingers.

The result? Reduced strain on the user’s own tendons and muscles, meaning fewer workplace stress injuries and better comfort for workers.

Temperature-Control Fabrics

Spacesuits need major insulation and temperature control to protect astronauts on extravehicular activities, aka spacewalks. To help solve this, we created a phase-change material with help from the Triangle Research and Development Corporation.

With funding from a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract, Triangle incorporated the material into a fabric glove insert that could maintain a steady temperature by absorbing and releasing heat, ensuring it feels just right.

While the invention never made it to orbit, it did make it into the driver’s seat.

Outlast Technologies exclusively licensed the material from Triangle and has incorporated it into outdoor gear, bedding, and now – auto racing suits with help from Cambridge, England-based Walero.

Due to extreme temperatures in the cockpit, drivers in almost every major racing championship wear Walero for its cooling properties. Cristiana Oprea (pictured) wears it while driving for the European Rally Championship. Credit: Walero

The race undergarments, bonded with fire-retardant material for added protection, help drivers maintain a lower core temperature and heart rate, which means fewer mistakes and better lap times.

The suits have been sold to both amateur racers and professional NASCAR drivers.

Lightweight Rain Jackets

The superinsulating material that makes up space blankets is one of our most ubiquitous spinoffs. Found everywhere from inside the walls and roofs of buildings to cryogenic tanks and MRI machines, radiant barrier technology was first created to insulate spacesuits and spacecraft. And now this NASA spinoff can be found in weatherproof jackets as well.

Inspired by her passion to run following a series of surgeries to help correct a life-threatening injury, Hema Nambiar launched her Larchmont, New York, start-up company 13-One. To create her jacket, she worked with Advanced Flexible Materials Inc.’s brand Heatsheets. The brand was already marketing products like the space blankets traditionally distributed after races to prevent dangerous drops in temperature.

The 13-One jackets are designed to be warm and weatherproof, but their thin, reflective lining lets them also be lightweight and easily portable. Credit: Lourenso Ramautar, Out of New York Studio

The resulting line of jackets has a black exterior and a lining to reflect body heat. They weigh less than a pound, are wind- and water-resistant, and easily pack into a small, built-in pouch.

Want to check out more NASA spinoffs? Be sure to find us on spinoff.nasa.gov and on Twitter.

Interested in licensing your own NASA technologies? Check out the NASA Technology Transfer program at technology.nasa.gov.

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Thank you for joining! It’s time to find out how YOU can get involved with NASA as a student or send your experiments to the International Space Station.

One of our experts today is Hannah Johnson, the team lead of a student group sending their experiment to the space station! She is joined by Becky Kamas, our lead for STEM on Station activities for students.

Between 12-1 p.m. EDT today, our experts will talk about about designing an experiment for microgravity, working with NASA to launch it to space, how you can join this initiative, and more!

View all answers HERE.

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

The Birth of a New Island

In late December 2014, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga erupted and sent a violent stream of steam, ash and rock into the air. The ash plumes rose as high as 30,000 feet (9 kilometers) into the sky and diverted airline flights.

Most new oceanic islands often wash away quickly within a few months. The island doesn't have an official name, and is referred to as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai after two older islands to either side.

But this island was different. One of our satellites that detects volcanic eruptions alerted our scientists who were very excited because this type of explosive, undersea eruption is rare. In fact, the new Tongan island is one of only three of this kind of volcanic islands in the past 150 years to emerge and survive. It's now three years old.

Zooming in from Space

The baby island is also the first of its kind to emerge in the modern satellite era. This is really important since it's difficult to send our researchers the South Pacific every month to see how the island has changed – which it did very rapidly, especially in the first six months. But satellites in space delivered monthly views which we used to make these high resolution, 3-D topographic maps. With these maps, we tracked the early life and evolution of the island in unprecedented detail.

In April 2015, we watched an isthmus bridge begin forming from the new island to the older island neighboring it to the east. Soft volcanic material, especially on the island's southern side, was eroded by the ocean and deposited on the tail end, which grew and grew till it reached the other island. It's about 1600 feet (500 meters) across, or the length of 5 football fields.

The erosive forces of the ocean broke down the southern wall of the crater lake in May 2015. We thought this might mean that the island wouldn't last much longer because the ocean could now attack the interior of the island's tuff cone. But in June, a sandbar formed, closing off the lake again and protecting the interior. The sandbar has been in place ever since.

Monitoring these changes of both erosion and growth, we now believe that the island will last from between 6 to 30 years!

Terranauts!

Why has the island survived for three years? What makes eroding it away harder than for other blink-and-you-miss-it oceanic islands that disappear into the sea after a few months? To answer these questions, we need rock samples.

Working with the Tongan government, we recruited two French citizens sailing around the world who were in Tongan waters in June, 2017, to go to the new island on our behalf. We treated them like astronauts and gave them instructions to take pictures and samples of the volcanic rocks at locations we could see from space along the coasts, the interior of the crater lake, and from the top of the tuff cone.

They did a fantastic job documenting each sample and where it came from, and then mailed the box of rocks back to our team at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where they are currently being analyzed. We believe that after the eruption, warm seawater mixed with volcanic ash to chemically alter it so that when it hardened into rock it was a tougher material. We're excited to see if the rock samples confirm this.

From Earth to Mars

Link: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11372

Did these Martian volcanoes form in an ocean or lake? If they did, wet environments such as these combined with heat from volcanic processes may be prime locations to search for evidence of past life. We may not know until we arrive on the red planet, but by studying Earth's landforms, we'll be better prepared when we do.

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

Introducing Astronaut Story Time – from Earth! 📖⁣⁣

Tomorrow and each weekday at 4 p.m. EDT, record-breaking astronaut Christina Koch, who recently returned to our home planet after 328 days in space, will read a children’s book on HER Instagram Live!⁣

👉🏽Follow @Astro_Christina to enjoy #NASAatHome ⁣ ⏰Tap our story on Instagram to set a reminder to tune in ⁣ ⁣ If you want to learn more about life as one of our @NASAastronauts or you want to apply to #BeAnAstronaut, click HERE. Applications close in 5 days. ⁣

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

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

Real-life space travel across the solar system’s vast expanse is not for the impatient – it can take many years to reach a destination. The positive side is that our hardy robots are well engineered to take the abuse that the harsh space environment dishes out. This means they can return good science over the course of many years, sometimes for decades.

This week, we take a look at a few of our longest-lived planetary missions. All of them have been returning deep space dispatches to Earth for more than five years. Combined, their flight time adds up to more than a century and a half. The legacy of their exploration is likely to endure even longer.

1. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - Launched June 18, 2009

LRO captures crystal-clear views of the lunar landscape on almost a daily basis – and has been doing it for years. Thanks to LRO, we’ve nearly mapped the entire surface now at very high resolution. Learn more about LRO HERE.

2. Dawn – Launched Sept. 27, 2007

The Dawn mission has been exploring the dwarf planet Ceres for just over a year now — but the Dawn spacecraft’s journey began long before that. After a trek from Earth to the asteroid belt, it made a stop at the giant asteroid Vesta before moving on to Ceres.

3. New Horizons – Launched Jan. 19, 2006

With its ongoing discoveries based on the July 2015 Pluto flyby, the New Horizons mission is in the news all the time. It’s easy to forget the mission is not new — the spacecraft has been traversing the dark of space for more than a decade. New Horizons is now more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km) from Earth as it delves deeper into the outer solar system.

4. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) – Launched Aug. 12, 2005

MRO recently marked a decade of returning spectacular images from Mars, in many more colors than just red. Peruse 10 years of MRO discoveries at Mars HERE.

5. Cassini – Launched Oct. 15, 1997

As it circles through the Saturn system, the Cassini spacecraft is currently about 975 million miles (1.57 billion km) from Earth, but its total odometer reads much more than that. This long, spectacular mission is slated to end next year. In the meantime, it’s about to enter the “Grande Finale” stage.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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

Take Your GIF Game to Cosmic Levels & React Like a NASA Astronaut!

We partnered with GIPHY to help take your GIF game to cosmic levelssss. As the Artemis generation who will witness a whole new era of space travel, we wanted make sure you could express yourself... like an astronaut!

So, if you want to show some love...

... or you’re pumped we’re half way to Friday ... 

We’ve got you covered.

Don’t miss our whole collection of astronaut reactions! 

Want to use them on your device? 

Type ‘NASAReaction’ in your device’s GIPHY keyboard... 

.... and choose your favorite! 

You can access our full collection of official NASA astronaut GIFs by visiting: https://giphy.com/nasa/reaction-pack

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

10 Intriguing Worlds Beyond Our Solar System

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the first confirmed planet around a sun-like star, a collection of some interesting exoplanets has been put together. Some of these are rocky, some are gaseous and some are very, very cold. But there’s one thing each these strange new worlds have in common: All have advanced scientific understanding of our place in the cosmos. Check out these 10 exoplanets, along with artist’s concepts depicting what they might look like. For an extended list of 20 exoplanets, go HERE. 

1. Kepler-186f

Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet to be found within the habitable zone -- the region around the host star where the temperature is right for liquid water. This planet is also very close in size to Earth. Even though we may not find out what’s going on at the surface of this planet anytime soon, it’s a strong reminder of why new technologies are being developed that will enable scientists to get a closer look at distance worlds. 

More Info

2. HD 209458 b (nickname “Osiris”)

The first planet to be seen in transit (crossing its star) and the first planet to have it light directly detected. The HD 209458 b transit discovery showed that transit observations were feasible and opened up an entire new realm of exoplanet characterization.

More info

3. Kepler-11 system

This was the first compact solar system discovered by Kepler, and it revealed that a system can be tightly packed, with at least five planets within the orbit of Mercury, and still be stable. It touched off a whole new look into planet formation ideas and suggested that multiple small planet systems, like ours, may be common.

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4. Kepler-16b

A real-life "Tatooine," this planet was Kepler's first discovery of a planet that orbits two stars -- what is known as a circumbinary planet.

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5. 51 Pegasi b

This giant planet, which is about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star every four days, was the first confirmed exoplanet around a sun-like star, a discovery that launched a whole new field of exploration.

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6. CoRoT 7b

The first super-Earth identified as a rocky exoplanet, this planet proved that worlds like the Earth were indeed possible and that the search for potentially habitable worlds (rocky planets in the habitable zone) might be fruitful.

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7. Kepler-22b

A planet in the habitable zone and a possible water-world planet unlike any seen in our solar system.

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8. Kepler-10b

Kepler's first rocky planet discovery is a scorched, Earth-size world that scientists believe may have a lava ocean on its surface.

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9. Kepler-444 system

The oldest known planetary system has five terrestrial-sized planets, all in orbital resonance. This weird group showed that solar systems have formed and lived in our galaxy for nearly its entire existence.

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10. 55 Cancri e

Sauna anyone? 55 Cancri e is a toasty world that rushes around its star every 18 hours. It orbits so closely -- about 25 times closer than Mercury is to our sun -- that it is tidally locked with one face forever blistering under the heat of its sun. The planet is proposed to have a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a “supercritical” state, where it is both liquid and gas, and then the whole planet is thought to be topped by a blanket of steam. 

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Two New Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

We’ve got big science news…!

We’ve just added two more science missions to our lineup! The two selected missions have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 millions years after the birth of our sun.

The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation.

Let’s take a dive into each mission…

Lucy

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids. Scheduled to launch in October 2021, the spacecraft is slated to arrive at its first destination, a main asteroid belt, in 2025. 

Then, from 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

Studying these Trojan asteroids will give us valuable clues to deciphering the history of the early solar system.

Psyche

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. The asteroid measures about 130 miles in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, it is thought to be comprised of mostly metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core.

Scientists wonder whether psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers early in their histories. The Psyche robotic mission is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

Get even more information about these two new science missions HERE. 

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How did you get to where you are now? and di you always know that this is where you wanted to end up?

Is it safe to look at the eclipse if it isn't fully covered by the sun? Say 75%

Not without proper eye wear. There will still be too much light that could burn your eyes. But you can have a ton of fun viewing the Sun using a https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/projection. In fact, there is a sunspot that is now on the Sun that you should be able to see using this indirect method!