Down-to-Earth Benefits of Space Exploration

“What does NASA do for me?” Countless people have asked me that question as the NASA administrator. It’s one I can answer easily – and one of the most important reasons is NASA spinoffs.

Finding homes for NASA technology beyond the space agency is part of our culture – it’s in our DNA. We have been transferring our technology to commercial companies since the very beginning of the agency. We also partner with industry, lending our expertise to help bring their innovations to market. These spinoffs result in products that improve and even save lives every day.

I feel confident saying you’re not too far from a NASA spinoff right now. Are you reading this on your phone? NASA helped develop the tiny, highly efficient video cameras in your device. It’s probably our single most ubiquitous spinoff technology, enabling high-definition video on the go and social media as we know it. But that’s not the only spinoff around you, or even in your phone. Every time your GPS app finds your location before offering you directions, it’s using software first developed at NASA.

We have countless spinoff examples of how investments in NASA pay dividends in the economy. The Apollo missions were expensive and challenging, but we’re still reaping the rewards here on Earth. Our new Spinoff 2021 publication tells more than 40 new stories of how NASA technologies have found uses beyond space. Each page represents at least one product for sale today. You – the public – benefit from not only those products but also the new ideas, companies, and jobs that come with them.

Spinoff 2021 highlights NASA innovations benefiting everyone from students to airplane passengers to assembly line workers and more. Here are a few highlights that stood out to me:

    • In this age of remote learning, a guided tour of Mars is more appealing than ever. We collaborated with Google to create a virtual reality tool, based on decades of Mars research, that allows students to follow in the path of the Curiosity rover, right from their computer, tablet, or smartphone.
    • The challenge of managing the organized chaos of airport ground operations, from fuel trucks to luggage handlers, has only grown as air travel has increased exponentially over the last few decades. Airport communication systems, however, were stuck in the past. We’re helping launch these systems into the digital age to help keep passengers safer and their flights on time.
    • In space, robots can’t rely on gravity to keep their footing. We turned back to Earth for inspiration and developed robot-gripping technology based on how geckos scale ceilings. Now that technology grabs circuit boards, solar panels, and other smooth parts on an assembly line.
    • PCBs (or polychlorinated biphenyls) were commonplace before the world realized they were toxic. But even decades after they were banned, the pollutant has proven hard to eliminate from the ecosystem – and the food chain. A NASA inventor drew inspiration from a drinking straw, inventing a tool that leaches PCBs from groundwater and the soil around it.

These spinoff success stories are only one piece of an ongoing process led by our Space Technology Mission Directorate. Our technology portfolio today has more than a thousand exciting innovations ready for enterprising companies or entrepreneurs to license and develop them into commercial products. As we gear up for 21st century exploration missions – NASA’s Artemis program, a sustainable presence on the Moon, and eventually landing humans on Mars – NASA will invent new technologies. They will become our spinoffs of tomorrow, leading to more wide-ranging benefits for everyone on Earth.

The redesigned 2021 NASA Spinoff publication features dozens of NASA innovations improving life on Earth.
The redesigned 2021 NASA Spinoff publication features dozens of NASA innovations improving life on Earth. Credit: NASA

 

Funding a New Era of Exploration, Science and Discovery

As the international leader in space for 60 years, NASA has achieved inspiring feats of exploration, discovery, science and technology. We have changed the way the world flies, communicates, navigates, predicts weather, produces food and energy, and so much more. 

President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2020 NASA budget is one of the strongest on record for our storied agency. In keeping with Space Policy Directive-1, it provides for the foundation of a national exploration campaign that will use the experience of the NASA workforce, coupled with the agility and innovation of our commercial and international partners, to create an architecture that is open, sustainable and agile. This unified effort will inspire generations and change the course of history as we realize the next great scientific, economic and technical achievements in space. 

The 2020 NASA budget supports a sustainable campaign of exploration, returning humans to lunar orbit and then the surface of the Moon, and eventually embarking on human missions to Mars and other destinations.

In low-Earth orbit, our Commercial Crew program remains strong and will soon be delivering American astronauts, on American rockets, from American soil to the International Space Station for the first time since 2011. The successes of our commercial and international partnerships on the International Space Station are now serving as the foundation for moving deeper into space. 

For the first time in a decade, NASA has a budget for pursuing activities on the lunar surface. We have called on American companies to help design and develop human lunar landers and reusable systems for surface activities. The Space Launch System and Orion, critical components of our exploration architecture, will reach important milestones in construction and testing this year, and our new lunar command module, the Gateway, will see international and commercial partnerships solidified and construction begin. 

NASA administrator and two astronauts sit down for conversation

With this budget, we will initiate the first round trip mission to the Red Planet with a Mars sample return mission, and many of the technological advancements we achieve moving forward to the Moon will provide critical data and capabilities for future robotic and crewed Mars missions. NASA is positioned to provide American leadership across each of these key destinations, empowering industry and the international community to move off the Earth in a unified, collaborative way. 

As this Administration places a priority on human exploration, the whole of NASA benefits with robust budgets and synergy across our mission directorates. We will continue to pursue transformative aeronautics technology as we develop the next generation of aircraft and make air travel safer and more efficient. We will increase our understanding of our home planet and move out on ambitious programs to study the far reaches of our solar system and beyond.

Through the leadership and investment of this Administration, the world will participate together in civilization-changing discoveries and achievements.

The fiscal year 2020 NASA budget is strong. We will explore, discover and inspire, and all of humanity will benefit from our efforts.

A Budget of Opportunities for NASA

NASA has once again received a strong bipartisan vote of confidence from President Donald J. Trump and Congress with the approval of our $21.5 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2019, which is $763.9 million above the FY 2018 enacted level. It’s a win for our space program and the American people.

All of our directorates received healthy topline funding at or exceeding the original budget request, and our work to move forward to the Moon and beyond remains on firm footing. We’re looking forward to giving Congress more details about our plans, and are confident that the taxpayer investment to explore deep space will reap large and ongoing dividends.

This budgetary support ensures progress on our bold plans to once again launch American astronauts to the International Space Station in American-made rockets from American soil on commercial spacecraft. We’re also marking milestones as we build the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to take astronauts deeper into space than we have ever gone before. These big ideas demand long term commitment. And this budget fully supports them. The dedicated NASA workforce has been demonstrating that these things can be done, and is making progress and reaching milestones across the spectrum of our work.

This year we plan to contract for the first work on our Gateway, a new orbiting home for astronauts at the Moon, and the budget supports our work on this next step in our plans to extend human presence around the Moon. We are working to procure a commercially provided lunar lander with tech demonstrations and science payloads this year. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contractors will drive the schedule for the first delivery to the lunar surface. Industry is also helping us refine and advance our plans for landers to return humans to the lunar surface by 2028.

Thanks to bipartisan support, NASA has funding to develop cutting edge technologies focused on deep space exploration such as new propulsion technologies, and extraordinary science that continues to impact the lives of everyone on the planet through our Earth observations that improve weather forecasting and disaster preparedness and improve agriculture. This budget is also helping us target big science goals such as the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Our aeronautics engineers are working on transformative technologies to advance hypersonic travel, reducing that familiar boom and making flights faster, as well as improving travel for the average American and making airplanes safer and flights more reliable. These are some the countless breakthroughs made by NASA scientists and engineers that are improving the quality of life for every day Americans – benefits whose value increases exponentially.

It’s clear that NASA at 60 continues to lead the world in creating the future, and we look forward to implementing this strong budget.

NASA is Everywhere – Talking to the Farm Community

One of my top priorities is to show all Americans how our work at NASA impacts their lives every day. Last week, I visited the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California. It was my privilege to share the great work the NASA Family is doing to help farmers improve our food supply and security.

The World Ag Expo draws more than 100,000 attendees from around the world.  People were excited to see how NASA science, aeronautics and technology are doing things that positively affect agriculture for the world.

I talked about NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory and how it’s enabling California to maximize the utility of every drop of water (including saving endangered species), while ensuring not a drop is wasted.  I highlighted how NASA is applying its Earth Science technologies to enable higher crop yields while using 20% less water and reducing nitrate leaching by 50%, and how this same technology mitigated a humanitarian disaster in Uganda, saving countless lives and millions of dollars in aid.  I also shared how NASA is helping to increase farm productivity by licensing our precision aircraft navigation technology for self-driving tractors and agricultural Unmanned Aerial Systems.

I hope you’ll help me spread the word about how our nation’s investment in NASA is having a tangible impact on lives all around the world.