Space Products & Innovation
Better Breathing Through Chemistry: Airocide
Purification of air is also critical in space habitats, where breathable atmosphere must be conserved, and venting potentially harmful volatile organic compounds and ethylene gas is not an option. Airocide, a purification system created for the ISS, replaces traditional air filters with a chemistry-based solution: an ultraviolet light activates a series of titanium dioxide-coated rings that oxidize and destroy harmful compounds on contact.
Measuring Pollution with Aqua
NASA measures atmospheric nitrogen dioxide concentration using a sensor on the Aqua satellite, indicating the severity of air pollution. Applying these satellite measurements of air pollution to maps showing total population of urban areas, NASA scientists have identified a series of regional relationships between pollution and population.
ISS Technology helps with inexpensive water quality testing
Monitoring the quality of water is a corollary issue to water availability. Methods of testing for contaminants in water supplies aboard the ISS that do not require incubators or other expensive instruments have been adapted for terrestrial use by the nonprofit organization mWater.
Earth Observation Satellites Track Global Water Supply
The World Economic Forum named water supply a global risk in its 2013 annual report. Space assets are helping to mitigate and monitor this risk. In January 2013, the World Resource Institute released the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, a free tool that integrates satellite and ground-based hydrologic data with socioeconomic data.
Landsat Data Wants to be Free
In 2008, the United States Geological Survey made Landsat data freely available, and the response greatly surpassed expectations. Image downloads from the satellite Earth observation and imaging program increased from an average of 38 per day to 5,700 per day, reaching 14 million downloads by November 2013.
Earth Observation Imagery, Twitter, and Fighting Fires
In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, it can be difficult to make full use of satellite data because there is not enough time to fully analyze enough data to obtain practical information. New efforts at crowdsourcing analysis have provided vital information following the tornados in Moore, Oklahoma, and the fires in Black Forest, Colorado.
Satellite Communications and Typhoons
Space provides a uniquely valuable vantage from which to track conditions and events on the Earth’s surface. The November 2013 typhoon that decimated the Philippines was tracked from space well before landfall, allowing some citizens to be evacuated and countless others to prepare for the storm.
For the Dune Enthusiast: the Stillshower?
The everyday activities that dominate life are host to space products and services that play unexpected roles. Just as the shift from baths to showers saved water, the new OrbSys Shower promises to go a step further. A mostly closed-loop system, the OrbSys Shower immediately purifies the soapy, used water, cycling it from the drain back into the shower head for reuse.
Space Technology Hall of Fame and Space Certification – 2013 Inductees
Space-based assets play a role in the governmental and economic framework of many countries, utilizing the unique vantage point of space to provide services otherwise unavailable. Space activities also permeate our lives in less visible ways: many consumer goods incorporate mechanical and technological advances originally developed for space programs.
2013 – The Mars Rover Programs, Benefiting Life on Earth
Space agencies explore distant planets and study galaxies billions of light years away, endeavors that might appear far removed from Earthly concerns, but in reality represent the building blocks for technologies that are changing our lives on a daily basis.