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Resource-efficient tech is must-have in space.
Space is the place
by David Wortman - 2.29.08
What do baby food, golf balls and wind turbines have in common? At first glance, the answer may seem to be “very little”—until you realize they’ve all benefited from technology backed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). With media attention focused on the agency’s rogue astronauts, controversy surrounding the agency’s position on climate change, recent space shuttle missions and the spacecraft Messenger’s recent flyby of Mercury, the contribution of NASA technology to tackling real-world problems on Earth may be the agency’s best untold story for cleantech entrepreneurs.
Over its 50-year history, NASA has helped to spark development of More than 1,500 technologies and overseen their transfer from the agency to the private sector, contributing to the fields of human health, worker productivity, national security, consumer product design and the environment. NASA-backed research has boosted technologies for the remote and resource-constrained environment of space exploration, producing lightweight and durable materials, funneling new power-system innovations to the transportation industry and developing hyper-spectral imaging technology being applied to projects such as distinguishing genetically modified corn from traditional corn.
What’s more, NASA technology is giving a boost to clean energy, climate change and environmental cleanup, too. Agency-led innovations have included more fuel-efficient aircraft engines, photovoltaic solar cells for use in remote locations, wind energy technology, polymer films for home energy conservation, and even soil remediation solutions to restore grounds contaminated after early launches at Kennedy Space Center. The agency’s remote sensing expertise has also been put to use monitoring wildlife habitat with light detection and ranging technology, which sends laser pulses to the earth’s surface to collect detailed land-cover data.
“Sustainability of our planet is something in which NASA is very interested,” says Doug Comstock, director of the agency’s Innovative Partnerships Program, which fosters technology partnerships, commercialization and innovation in support of NASA’s mission and national priorities.
A history of partnerships
President Dwight Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 not only to conduct space and aeronautics research, but also to keep pace with the then–Soviet Union’s launching of its Sputnik 1 satellite. Since then, the agency’s mission and the focus of its 10 research and space centers have squarely centered on pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. In 2008, with NASA turning 50, the agency has many big projects on its plate, such as completing the international space station, beginning robotics missions to the moon, and returning people to the moon by 2020.
Often overshadowed by its space missions, NASA’s goals and programs to better understand planet Earth tend to get low priority.In 2001, the Bush administration launched the Climate Change Research Initiative, tasking NASA to track global climate change [see “NASA’s non-position on climate change,” this page]. In the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the massive ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, NASA scientists are playing a pivotal role in tracking ever-shrinking polar ice. The agency’s strategic plan for 2006–2016 includes a wide range of initiatives to refine its remote sensing capabilities to track future changes in the planet’s ice cover, carbon cycles, ecosystems and coastal processes.
The agency’s Ames Research Center has launched a Cleantech Partnership Program to guide the work of 50 researchers in clean energy, environmental treatment, environmental monitoring, and climatology and modeling. Ames has also formed a Global Research into Energy and the Environment at NASA (GREEN) Team, a group of NASA and non-NASA scientists, engineers and educators, to determine how the agency’s tools and expertise developed for exploring and living in space can be applied to energy and environmental problems on Earth.
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