NASA Spinoffs in Your Life, High school
Look at the camera on a phone. Inside sits a tiny chip that turns light into a picture.
Did a NASA engineer invent the kind of camera chip that’s in phones?
Your word of the day is
SAT-l-ite
A natural body that revolves around a planet, such as a moon, or a device designed to be launched into orbit around Earth, another planet or the Sun.
Eric Fossum’s team at NASA’s JPL made a camera chip for space missions, and companies later built the chip into phone cameras.
Which part of the line “The cam in your hand, NASA built that” does NASA’s record support?
Fossum’s camera chip needed far less power than the camera chips of the time.
Why was a low-power camera chip such a big deal for phone cameras?
Charles Yost’s memory foam absorbed a lot of energy, spread a passenger’s weight evenly and slowly returned to its shape.
Which property of memory foam protected airline passengers in a crash?
Which property of memory foam made long airline flights more comfortable?
Plantronics introduced the world’s first lightweight headset for airline pilots in 1962. Astronauts then wore Plantronics headsets from the Mercury missions through Apollo and Skylab.
Why do people credit NASA for headsets?
NASA gave Plantronics a contract to fit the headset inside a space helmet, and NASA engineers helped design its noise-canceling microphone.
Which description fits NASA’s part in headsets?
Claim, evidence, reasoning
A 1965 report to NASA’s Langley Research Center, written by Douglas Engelbart’s team at SRI under a NASA contract, says, “The ‘mouse’ was developed by this project.”
Which claim about the rap’s line “When you click that mouse” is best supported?
Claim, evidence, reasoning
Which evidence best backs the claim that NASA paid for the project that developed the mouse?
At the end of the video, Raven says the US spends less than a penny on NASA for each federal dollar. The Planetary Society reports that NASA got about 0.35% of US federal spending in 2025.
About how many cents of each federal dollar went to NASA in 2025?
In May 2025, the administration proposed cutting NASA’s total budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion.
The proposed cut to NASA’s total budget was about ____.
The same plan would have cut NASA’s science budget from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion.
The proposed cut to NASA’s science budget was about ____.
Which proposed cut matches Raven’s line about cutting NASA’s budget in half?
The May 2025 plan would have saved $3.4 billion on NASA science in one year. All of NASA got about 0.35% of US federal spending in 2025.
Which statement about the cost of NASA science fits these numbers?
The Planetary Society, a group that pushes for space science funding, counted 41 science projects the May 2025 plan would cancel.
Which approach evaluates the proposed NASA science cut the way an engineer would?
Lesson complete
Today’s word
satellite
SAT-l-ite
A natural body that revolves around a planet, such as a moon, or a device launched into orbit around Earth, another planet or the Sun. Raven’s rap opens with “Satellites up, hurricanes spin.”
Look at these again
You got every question right the first time.
Sources
- Eric Fossum and colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Spinoff 2017 and a JPL news release, June 20, 1995
- Charles Yost, under a NASA contract through Stencel Aero Engineering, with NASA’s Ames Research Center, NASA Spinoff 2005, “Forty-Year-Old Foam Springs Back With New Benefits”
- Al Gross for AVIA, and KangaROOS USA, NASA Spinoff 1991 and NASA Spinoff 1986
- William English, Douglas Engelbart and Bonnie Huddart, Stanford Research Institute, for NASA’s Langley Research Center, Final report, “Computer-Aided Display Control,” 1965
- NASA’s Lewis Research Center, licensed to Air Products and Chemicals, NASA Spinoff 1996
- NASA’s Langley Research Center, with Speedo, “Space-Age Swimsuit Reduces Drag, Breaks Records,” NASA
- NASA-funded researchers working on life support for Mars missions, “Enriched Baby Formula,” NASA
- NASA, which builds and launches the GOES satellites, and NOAA, which runs them, NASA’s GOES mission page
- NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC), “Official error trends,” NHC Forecast Verification, updated July 8, 2026, and its table “Average NHC Atlantic Track Forecast Errors (n mi), Tropical Storms and Hurricanes” (verification as of May 12, 2026)
- NOAA’s satellite and information service (NESDIS), “Twenty Years After Katrina: NOAA Satellite Advancements for Hurricane Forecasts and Tracking,” August 28, 2025
- The Planetary Society, a group that argues for space science funding, Press release, May 30, 2025
- NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Spinoff 2019
- Plantronics, with NASA engineers, NASA Spinoff 2005, “Crystal-Clear Communication a Sweet-Sounding Success”
- NASA’s Spinoff office, Spinoff FAQ
- NASA Spinoff articles on the video’s other claims: CT scans, eye surgery
- NASA pages: memory foam, clear braces, NASA history
- Rob Sharp, “50 years, 50 giant leaps: How NASA rocked our world”, The Irish Independent, July 29, 2008, the source of the Nike Air story
- NASA budget: SpacePolicyOnline, July 10, 2025, The Planetary Society and its May 30, 2025 press release, and Roohi Dalal, “Congress Passes Fiscal Year 2026 Spending Bills for NSF, NASA, and DOE,” American Astronomical Society, January 15, 2026, for the final 2026 budget (H.R. 6938, signed January 23, 2026)
- NGSS pages for the practice and connection elements, linked in the standards table: MS-PS1-3, HS-PS4-4, HS-PS4-5
- ABET, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2026-2027, Criterion 3, Student Outcomes
- Word origins from Dictionary.com: satellite, sputnik, aeronautics, aero-, nautical
- Transcript from the lyrics on the July 2025 version of Raven’s blog post, and outro quotes from the current post
- Instagram original, not linked because Instagram needs a login