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Overhead view of the international Space Station orbiting above Earth as day turns to night. Credit: NASAALT

Spinoffs: Space Station Innovations in Your Cart (and Heart!)

You might think NASA technology is just spaceships and telescopes, but did you know the camera in your cell phone is, too? It’s one of many NASA innovations now found everywhere on Earth.

The International Space Station has had crew living on it for 25 years straight. In that time, the space station has enabled a tremendous amount of research, helping NASA and scientists better understand long-term living in space – but it’s not just knowledge coming back down to Earth! Technologies developed for the space station and experiments conducted aboard the orbiting lab also benefit people on the planet below. Here are a few of these inventions, or spinoffs, you can find in your everyday life.

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5 Unpredictable Things Swift Has Studied (and 1 It’s Still Looking For)

Our Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory — Swift for short — is celebrating its 20th anniversary! The satellite studies cosmic objects and events using visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light. Swift plays a key role in our efforts to observe our ever-changing universe. Here are a few cosmic surprises Swift has caught over the years — plus one scientists hope to see.

This sequence shows X-rays from the initial flash of GRB 221009A that could be detected for weeks as dust in our galaxy scattered the light back to us. This resulted in the appearance of an extraordinary set of expanding rings, here colored magenta, with a bright yellow spot at the center. The images were captured over 12 days by the X-ray Telescope aboard NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)ALT

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On a jet black background, a bright spiral galaxy softly swirls with sprays of stars extending outward from a small, glowing yellow center. Another galaxy is beneath it and to the left, angling downward. This one is shaped almost like a pea pod with faded tendrils of stars extending from both ends. Together, the pair looks like a rose with the spiral galaxy forming the blossom and the elongated one forming the stem. A handful of large, bright stars speckle the background like sparkles. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon, T. Borders, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers (Viz 3D team, STScI)ALT

Love Letters from Space

Love is in the air, and it’s out in space too! The universe is full of amazing chemistry, cosmic couples held together by gravitational attraction, and stars pulsing like beating hearts.

Celestial objects send out messages we can detect if we know how to listen for them. Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help us scour the skies for all kinds of star-crossed signals.

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All-Star Moments in Space Communications and Navigation

How do we get information from missions exploring the cosmos back to humans on Earth? Our space communications and navigation networks – the Near Space Network and the Deep Space Network – bring back science and exploration data daily.

Here are a few of our favorite moments from 2024.

An image of the plaque presented to Missy Elliott. The background is blue and has a black box in it. The black box is outlined in white. Within the black box is a colorful image of Venus, taken by Magellan, a NASA meatball patch, and some text. Venus appears in shades of the rainbow, which correspond to different planetary radii, measured in kilometers. The text says, "Presented to Missy Elliott from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Lyrics from your iconic song "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" embarked on a historic journey on July 12, 2024, traveling approximately 158 million miles from Earth to Venus, to become the first hip-hop song transmitted to deep space. This groundbreaking achievement marks a significant milestone in the fusion of music, technology, and space exploration." Credit: NASAALT

1. Hip-Hop to Deep Space

The stars above and on Earth aligned as lyrics from the song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” by hip-hop artist Missy Elliott were beamed to Venus via NASA’s Deep Space Network. Using a 34-meter (112-foot) wide Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13) radio dish antenna, located at the network’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, the song was sent at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 12 and traveled about 158 million miles from Earth to Venus — the artist’s favorite planet. Coincidentally, the DSS-13 that sent the transmission is also nicknamed Venus!

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