| Electricity in the air |
05.03.12 |
Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center are helping to develop a novel approach to generating energy with wind turbines—get rid of 400 tons of tower and concrete, and just fly the blade tips. (Artist's concept)
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| Astrobiology research sparks 'GreenTech' revolution |
04.04.12 |
NASA’s astrobiologists study microbial life to understand how it transformed a rocky Earth into the life-sustaining planet we inhabit today. These studies of photosynthetic ‘green’ algae are creating sparks for new ‘green technologies’ on Earth and future human space exploration missions.
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| Getting a charge out of wasted automobile heat |
02.09.12 |
Only about 25 percent of the energy in every gallon of gasoline you buy actually helps your vehicle to run. The rest is converted to heat, which is radiated uselessly off of your engine or blown out of your exhaust pipe. What if you could recover some of that wasted energy? JPL and automakers are developing technology to do just that.
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| NASA envisions clean energy from algae |
11.29.11 |
NASA scientists have proposed an ingenious and remarkably resourceful process to produce "clean energy" biofuels, that cleans waste water, removes carbon dioxide from the air, retains important nutrients, and does not compete with agriculture for land or freshwater.
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| Alternative energy crops in space |
11.07.11 |
What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station.
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| Fishing for wind: Nature inspires more efficient wind turbines |
10.17.11 |
John Dabiri made wind turbines that work more efficiently. He uses the lesser-known vertical-axis turbine. These can be bunched together until they’re almost touching, harnessing the energy of almost all the air that blows by. The key is that every turbine rotates in the opposite direction from its nearest neighbors.
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| Solar sculptures: Converting sunlight into energy |
07.20.11 |
Harry Atwater recently converted a previously unheard of 27.6 percent of the light aimed at a cell into electricity. These solar cells trap the light and keep it contained. They are very thin making them very inexpensive to produce.
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| Turning the tide to energy |
03.05.09 |
NASA researchers who developed a new way to power robotic underwater vehicles believe a spin-off technology could help convert ocean energy into electrical energy on a much larger scale.
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| Fuel cells on the fast track |
12.17.08 |
A Caltech team is hot on the trail of an energy technology for the future—fuel cells that can run on more traditional fuels, like ethanol or biomass, while also solving many of the problems of conventional hydrogen fuel cells.
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