Tag: Technology Highlights
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New Ultra-Black Coating Could Enable the Search for Life on Exoplanets
A recently developed ultra-black coating not only efficiently absorbs light, but is also extremely thin and durable, enabling its potential use on starshades that could someday support the imaging of exoplanets and potentially facilitate the detection of life beyond our…
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Unearthly Plumbing Required for Plant Watering in Space
NASA is demonstrating new microgravity fluids technologies to enable advanced “no-moving-parts” plant-watering methods aboard spacecraft. Crop production in microgravity will be important to provide whole food nutrition, dietary variety, and psychological benefits to astronauts exploring deep space. Unfortunately, even the…
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The Autonomous Ion Mass Spectrometer Sentry: Observing Ionospheric Plasma and Monitoring Contamination for the International Space Station
A team at Los Alamos National Laboratory is leveraging SMD-funded technology developments to design a novel sensor that examines the interactions between space plasma and the plumes generated by the thrusters of spacecraft delivering supplies and crew members to the…
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Revealing the Hidden Universe with Full-shell X-ray Optics at NASA MSFC
The study of X-ray emission from astronomical objects reveals secrets about the Universe at the largest and smallest spatial scales. Celestial X-rays are produced by black holes consuming nearby stars, emitted by the million-degree gas that traces the structure between…
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Solid State Quantum Magnetometers—Seeking out water worlds from the quantum world
“Follow the water!” The solar system is full of water in different states, from the Sun’s water vapor to the ice of Pluto and beyond. Water is not only linked to the possibility to sustain life, it is also interesting…
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Zero-Boil-Off Tank Experiments to Enable Long-Duration Space Exploration
Do we have enough fuel to get to our destination? This is probably one of the first questions that comes to mind whenever your family gets ready to embark on a road trip. If the trip is long, you will…
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Deploying and Demonstrating Navigation Aids on the Lunar Surface
NASA is developing lunar navigation beacons to be deployed on spacecraft or the lunar surface to aid in localization and help future space vehicles determine position, velocity, and time to high accuracy.
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HOTTech Attempts to Tackle Venus
Specialized test rig determines how new technologies fare in extreme conditions PROJECT: Hot Operating Temperature Technology (HOTTech) Program; NASA Glenn Extreme Environment Rig (GEER) SNAPSHOT: Projects in NASA’s HOTTech Program are developing technologies that will operate on the surface of…
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Unlocking the Sun’s X-rays
PROJECT Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) SNAPSHOT NASA has developed a new type of instrument that can provide key information to predict and understand solar flares. X-ray spectroscopy provides unique capabilities for answering fundamental questions in solar physics and…