2010
Seeing Clearly with High Quality Glass
Using systems and technologies developed for the Hubble telescope and the Columbus laboratory module of the ISS, Kentec, an Italian company, designed a machine vision system that improves the reliability of glass manufacturing operations.
Guarantee of Authenticity: Precision Glass Tagging
A new laser technology, designed to create precise lenses and mirrors for space telescopes, is able to inscribe numbers inside glass without damaging it. The laser operates in a manner similar to lasers used in laser eye correction, by beaming energy through the surface of the glass to make changes within.
How Many Cars In a Parking Lot?
Location-based imagery data increasingly provides business and market intelligence to companies. This service combines satellite-based location data with geographic information systems. Satellite surveillance technology is now also being used in the financial sector.
Odor-fighting Space Underwear
In October 2010, Toray Industries, a Japanese textile company, and J-Space, a company licensed to market JAXA technologies, announced plans to develop sportswear out of material originally designed for use in astronaut clothing.
Keeping an Ion Explosive and Chemical Agents
Technology designed to detect life on Mars has been developed into a portable device that can detect explosives and chemical agents. The technology is based on ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), a fast and sensitive method for separating and identifying gaseous molecules.
Nipping Fleet Problems in the Bud with GPS
Satellite GPS tracking data is helping to recover stolen automobiles and increase employee accountability. General Motors has installed a Stolen Vehicle Slowdown capability in 1.7 million of its new vehicles since the service’s creation in 2007.
Woodchoppers Fall: Catching North Korean Illegal Logging Operations
In May 2010, a researcher at Purdue University used a combination of NASA satellite imagery and information from Google Earth to determine that North Korea was conducting illegal logging operations in a U.N.-protected forest.
Protecting Global Heritage with Open Initiative
The Open Initiative on the Use of Space Technologies to Support the World Heritage Convention is a program sponsored by ESA and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Open Initiative focuses on the use of satellite imagery to identify and protect U.N.-designated world heritage sites and alert local authorities to changes that could pose a threat to those sites.
Benefiting the GLOBE By Working Together
Since 1995, NASA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have operated the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program.
5th/7th Graders Learn How to Use NASA Mars Exploration Instruments
In June 2010, it was announced that data returned by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft had been used to discover a previously unknown cave on the Martian surface. This discovery was made not by NASA scientists, but by a group of 16 seventh-grade science students at a middle school in Cottonwood, California, through the joint NASA-Arizona State University Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP).