Another Life-Saving NASA Spinoff
Lisa Mazzuca (NASA GSFC), Finalist, 2017 Promising Innovations Medal, Service to America Medals
“In August 2010, a single-engine airplane crashed in the Alaskan wilderness killing five passengers, including former Sen. Ted Stevens. His friend, former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, survived the crash and was stranded on the side of a mountain with three others for more than 18 hours while awaiting rescue and medical assistance. One reason the search and rescue team took so long to reach the crash site was the failure of a small distress beacon in the aircraft, called an emergency transmitter, which is supposed to signal authorities and provide the approximate location of those in need of help. This accident, coupled with the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner in 2014 and other instances where emergency beacon systems failed, prompted NASA’s Lisa Mazzuca to examine the growing problem. Through two years of research and testing, Mazzuca’s team developed a sturdier, more reliable, second-generation transmitter and an upgraded global satellite system to help responders locate crash sites more precisely. “This is a huge development. It’s going to help people out in the most distressing circumstances and will have an enormous impact on scores of people who may not otherwise have had a chance to see another day,” O’Keefe said.”
Despite being excellent work and great things to have, I’m not sure if this and FINDER are technically “spinoff” developments. That usually implies unanticipated benefits from an unrelated project. For example, hospitals’ use of remote medical monitors, developed to see how well early astronauts we’re doing during a mission. The benefits of the “spinoff” were not the direct goal of the original work. With FINDER and this improved tracking system, the benefits seem to have been the originally intended goal. That’s the difference between doing great work by design, and great things happening by accident when you push the limits for other reasons.
Its a spinoff.
I wonder if this very smart Lady could find a way to come up with a way to incorporate a cheap version of this for child car seats. there has to be something, some way a fairly simple device can be adapted to car seats to help stop the deaths of children being left/forgotten in the car.
These are impressive achievements, not least because it is always a challange to get the funding to take NASA concepts and technology to the point where they can be developed commercially, even when the actual funds required are quite small, because it is not directly required for one of the major NASA missions. Some modest level of discretionary funding for R&D at the organizational level could allow NASA to provide considerably more in the way of practical benefits for the taxpayers.
This sounds awesome!