Astronaut use of Tang orange drink mix fed a years-long advertising campaign for the product's maker during NASA's Apollo period in the 1970s.
Everyday life on Earth is now heavily influenced by technologies developed for the space program that found commercial spinoffs.Here is a sampling of space technologies and their non-NASA applications:
Laser angioplasty makes use of a laser system first used for satellite-based atmospheric studies. The technology is used to treat atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries that can lead to heart disease.
Advanced pacemaker design incorporates bidirectional telemetry, a type of two-way radio communications developed by NASA that allows doctors to monitor and alter the function of implanted pacemakers. The same technology is also used in implantable heart defibrillators, and even a swallowable temperature pill that monitors internal body temperatures.
Body imaging by CT scan, CatScan and Magnetic Resonance Imagine creates computer-generated images of slice-like pictures of the body's insides and was developed from digital signal processing science pioneered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the mid-1960s to make computer-enhanced pictures of the moon for use in the Apollo Lunar Landing Program.
Cool suits allow people born without sweat glands more mobility outside a controlled temperature environment. The technology was developed as an integral part of space suit temperature regulating systems dating back to the earliest manned space flights. Commercial applications are also used by race car drivers, firefighters and pilots.
Vehicle controllers allow parapalegics to drive using hand controls developed for Apollo astronauts driving the lunar rover.
Food processing control methods developed to protect space meals against bacterial contamination - and keep food bits from contaminating the spacecraft environment - are still used to ensure the safety of canned food products.
Self-righting life raft technology developed by NASA during the Apollo program where astronauts left their command modules after ocean landings to wait in inflatable rafts for helicopter pickup. The commercial Givens Buoy Life Raft is based on a patented NASA design and is credited with saving more than 500 lives.
Corrosion-resistant coating used to protect the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge was developed by NASA in the early 1970s to reduce maintenance costs at the Kennedy Space Center.
Microspheres, the first commercial products manufactured in space, are tiny plastic spheres of identical diameter and perfect in shape because they were produced in the absence of gravity. They are used as reference standards for extremely accurate calibration of instruments in research and industrial laboratories.
Cordless power tools were developed by Black & Decker for Apollo missions, where a remote drill was needed to take core samples from the surface of the moon. Cordless tools now include hand-held vacuums, drills, saws, shrub trimmers and grass shears.
Space blanket material was developed by coating synthetic plastics, like Mylar, with vaporized metal to create a foil-like effect. The material is used as thermal shields, reflective canopies.
Virtual reality devices were developed in the mid 1980s in NASA's Ames Research Center to provide highly realistic simulations. Stereo imagry in a headset device and sensors in gloves or worn elsewhere on the body allow a computer to integrate the user in a synthetic 3-D environment.
Portable computers trace their origins to the 1983 NASA shuttle mission device dubbed SPOC, for Shuttle Portable Onboard Computer. NASA calls SPOC the first true portable laptop computer.
Fabric structures used as air-supported roofs on sports arenas grew from NASA-developed space suit fabrics dating to the Apollo program. For NASA, Owens-Corning developed a glass fiber yard that could be woven into a fabric and then coated with Teflon for added strength, durability and an ability to repel moisture.
Clean-room apparel used by computer chip manufacturers was developed through NASA contamination control technology in the 1960s since a tiny speck of dust could trigger a malfunction in a sensitive spacecraft system. Special clothing keeps microscopic body particles from escaping into a clean-room environment through tiny openings in woven clothing they wore.