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NASA Spinoffs in Your Life, Middle school

The back of a white Google Pixel phone with its camera lenses in a row

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?

#NASADidThat

Dr. Raven raps about everyday things that came out of NASA research, like phone camera chips, memory foam and weather apps. At the end, she speaks out against a plan to cut NASA’s science budget.

The Syncom IV communications satellite in orbit above Earth
The Latin word means bodyguard. A bodyguard sticks close to a person, and a moon sticks close to its planet.

Your word of the day is

SAT-l-ite

satelliteattendant, bodyguardfrom Latin satelles

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.

A GOES weather satellite image of Hurricane Lee and Tropical Storm Margot over the Atlantic Ocean

GOES weather satellites take pictures and measurements of storms from high above Earth.

How do weather satellites help keep people safe from hurricanes?

Close-up of the soft, quilted top of a white mattress

Memory foam takes the shape of your body and then slowly springs back.

Why would memory foam made for airplane seats also make a good mattress?

A phone showing a map app

The US Air Force built GPS. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote software that fixes small GPS errors.

What part did NASA play in the pin on your map?

Video of a person on a beach taking a photo of the ocean with a smartphone

Eric Fossum’s camera chip used much less power than older chips and fit most of a camera’s parts onto one small chip.

Why was Eric Fossum’s camera chip a good fit for phones?

A GOES-16 satellite image of Hurricane Idalia reaching Florida while Hurricane Franklin passes Bermuda

The NHC’s average two-day hurricane forecast error was 252.5 nautical miles in the 1970s, 226.4 in the 1980s, 157.2 in the 1990s, 103.7 in the 2000s, 67.7 in the 2010s and 55.2 from 2020 to 2025.

What do the National Hurricane Center’s forecast errors show?

Video of the International Space Station and its long solar panels against black space

NASA calls a product a spinoff when a company sells something that uses NASA technology or know-how.

Which pair matches a NASA spinoff with the job the spinoff was first made to do?

Engineers in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory check an imaging instrument made for a satellite

Lesson complete

Today’s word

satellite

SAT-l-ite

An object in space that travels around a bigger object, like a planet. The Moon is Earth’s natural satellite. People launch satellites too, like the weather satellites that watch storms.

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Sources
  1. Eric Fossum and colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Spinoff 2017 and a JPL news release, June 20, 1995
  2. 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”
  3. Al Gross for AVIA, and KangaROOS USA, NASA Spinoff 1991 and NASA Spinoff 1986
  4. William English, Douglas Engelbart and Bonnie Huddart, Stanford Research Institute, for NASA’s Langley Research Center, Final report, “Computer-Aided Display Control,” 1965
  5. NASA’s Lewis Research Center, licensed to Air Products and Chemicals, NASA Spinoff 1996
  6. NASA’s Langley Research Center, with Speedo, “Space-Age Swimsuit Reduces Drag, Breaks Records,” NASA
  7. NASA-funded researchers working on life support for Mars missions, “Enriched Baby Formula,” NASA
  8. NASA, which builds and launches the GOES satellites, and NOAA, which runs them, NASA’s GOES mission page
  9. 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)
  10. NOAA’s satellite and information service (NESDIS), “Twenty Years After Katrina: NOAA Satellite Advancements for Hurricane Forecasts and Tracking,” August 28, 2025
  11. The Planetary Society, a group that argues for space science funding, Press release, May 30, 2025
  12. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Spinoff 2019
  13. Plantronics, with NASA engineers, NASA Spinoff 2005, “Crystal-Clear Communication a Sweet-Sounding Success”
  14. NASA’s Spinoff office, Spinoff FAQ
  15. NASA Spinoff articles on the video’s other claims: CT scans, eye surgery
  16. NASA pages: memory foam, clear braces, NASA history
  17. 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
  18. 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)
  19. NGSS pages for the practice and connection elements, linked in the standards table: MS-PS1-3, HS-PS4-4, HS-PS4-5
  20. ABET, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2026-2027, Criterion 3, Student Outcomes
  21. Word origins from Dictionary.com: satellite, sputnik, aeronautics, aero-, nautical
  22. Transcript from the lyrics on the July 2025 version of Raven’s blog post, and outro quotes from the current post
  23. Instagram original, not linked because Instagram needs a login