NASA has launched an interactive website that allows users to tour through buildings to discover common items that the space agency helped improve — such as water purifiers and selfie cameras. The showcased spinoffs are commercial products that apply NASA technology originally developed for studying and exploring space. NASA Home & City features about 130 spinoff technologies in a virtual space, allowing users to tour through buildings and rooms to discover common items that NASA inspired or helped improve.
These “Our space technology continues to improve life on Earth,” said Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “NASA Home & City is a place of discovery for people, and especially students, who have ever wondered why space exploration should matter to them,” said Reuter. The website showcases only a small sample of NASA spinoff and dual-purpose technologies, NASA said in a statement.
The spinoffs include water filtration systems originally designed to purify water for the Apollo astronauts. The silver ion technology purifies and softens water while inhibiting bacteria growth in filtering units. Today, manufacturers use this combined technology to create home-use water filtering systems that not only purify and soften, but also remove objectionable tastes and odours.
Wind turbines designed for Mars and tested in Antarctica — where access to solar power is scarce — can be found generating power all over the globe. NASA spacesuits and firefighter gear use a similar fabric. The images NASA captures of distant galaxies or newly discovered stars has evolved greatly over the years. In the 1990s a NASA engineer built a new kind of image sensor which requires very low power and is highly efficient making it ideal for digital and cell phone cameras on Earth.