NASA launches website to showcase how its research impacts everyday life

In a recent development, NASA has launched an interactive website that allows users to tour through buildings, discover common items that the space agency helped improve – such as water purifiers and selfie cameras.

The portal showcases commercial products that has utilised NASA technology originally developed for studying and exploring space.

The website, NASA Home & City showcases about 130 spinoff technologies in a virtual space, allowing users to tour through buildings and rooms to discover common items that NASA inspired or helped improve. Jim Bridenstine, Acting Associate Administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate said “Our space technology continues to improve life on Earth.” He also mentioned to Reuters, ““NASA Home & City is a place of discovery for people, and especially students, who have ever wondered why space exploration should matter to them.”

Introducing NASA Home & City! A brand new interactive website where you can explore all the ways NASA benefits you in your daily life. From GPS to airplanes, from baby formula to the camera in your phone, @NASA_Technology is all around you! Find out where: https://t.co/r2L2Oxd198 pic.twitter.com/24fGSiVlZx

— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) September 18, 2018

The statement also stated that, only a small sample of NASA spinoff such as water filtration systems originally designed to purify water for the Apollo astronauts and dual-purpose technologies will be featured in the website.

The silver ion water purifying technology, purifies and softens water while inhibiting bacteria growth in filtering units. Now-a-days, this combined technology is used by manufacturers to create home-use water filtering systems that not only purify and soften, but also remove objectionable tastes and odours from water.

Wind turbines which were originally designed for Mars and tested in Antarctica, where access to solar power is scarce — can actually be found generating power all over the globe.

It is also seen that NASA spacesuits and firefighter gear use a similar fabric. The quality of the images NASA captures of distant galaxies or newly discovered stars has improved by leaps and bounds over the year.

NASA, in 1990s, came up with an innovative image sensor that required very low power and is highly efficient making it ideal for digital and cell phone cameras of today.

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