Category Technology/Electronics

A NASA spinoff is a technology, originally developed to meet our mission needs that has been transferred to the public. Here’s a list of just a few NASA spinoff technologies (in no particular order):
1. Enriched Baby Food: While developing life support for Mars missions, NASA-funded researchers discovered a natural source for an omega-3 fatty acid that plays a key role in infant development. The ingredient has since been infused in more than 99% of infant formula on the market and is helping babies worldwide develop healthy brains, eyes and hearts.

2. Digital Camera Sensors: Whether you take pictures and videos with a DSLR camera, phone or even a GoPro, you’re using NASA technology...

This new technology used both a heating and then a cooling process to operate the robotic finger. Results from the study showed a more rapid flexing and extending motion of the finger as well as its ability to recover its trained shape more accurately and more completely, confirming the biomechanical basis of its trained shape. Credit: Florida Atlantic University

This robotic finger could be adapted for a prosthetic device, such as on a prosthetic hand. It uses a shape memory alloy, a 3D CAD model of a human finger, a 3D printer and a unique thermal training technique. “We have been able to thermomechanically train our robotic finger to mimic the motions of a human finger like flexion and extension,” said Engeberg...

This brings skyrmions a step closer to use in real-world data storage as well as other novel magnetic and electronic technologies, ie the basis for a new type of computer memory that never loses its grip on the data it stores. Until just recently, magnetic skyrmions had only been seen at very low temperatures and under powerful magnetic fields.

The magnetic force in each individual atom in a magnet ie “magnetic moments” all line up the same way. But under extreme conditions, certain magnetic materials (such as MnSi or FeCoSi) can, instead, develop spots where the moments curve and twist, forming a winding, ring-like configuration...

In a pump-probe experiment, the pump laser pulse first excites the 2D material, and later, at controllable time-delays, the probe laser pulse returns to the energy-pumped site to provide information about the evolution of the pump’s effect on the material. In the ORNL experiment, absorption of pumped energy first generated two excitons, X1 and X2. Dissociation of these excitons through hole trapping at the substrate freed their electrons. Then the arriving probe pulse generated new electron–hole pairs, which joined the remaining free electrons to form trions T1 and T2. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Quasiparticles – excitations that behave collectively like particles – can be difficult to detect...