🌅 How NASA Improves Life on Earth from Space

SOURCE

NASA Spinoff 2026

WHAT TO KNOW

• NASA’s Technology Transfer Program launched in 1964 to make products, discoveries, and procedures developed for space exploration available to the public for commercial use, maximizing their benefit to all Americans and serving the agency’s mission of improving life on Earth from space. Since 1976, more than 2,400 commercial products and technologies that benefited or originated from NASA inventions, research, funding, or expertise—called “spinoffs”—have been brought to the public, which NASA highlights each year in its annual Spinoff publication. The Technology Transfer Program has operated under various names throughout its life, however, it’s never been closed, making it NASA’s longest continuously operated mission.

WHY IT MATTERS

• You encounter several spinoff technologies each day, including the camera on your smartphone (the word “pixel” itself was coined by a NASA engineer), the memory foam in your seat cushion, and the cordless vacuum and power tools you use at home. NASA innovations are also at the heart of nearly all sunglasses and prescription eyewear on Earth, the real-time global precision of most commercial GPS technology, and the vital nutrients added to more than 90% of infant formulas sold in the U.S.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• NASA’s Artemis II launched on April 1 for a 10-day mission around the Moon, venturing farther from Earth than humans have ever gone. Aboard the Orion spacecraft is a new communication system developed by engineers at NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses lasers to transmit far more data at far greater speeds than traditional microwave systems and could one day spawn future spinoff technology of its own. Artemis II will make a record-breaking return in a splash down off the coast of San Diego expected today around 5 pm PT/8pm ET.