Brewing Development in the U.S., NASA way

By CIOReview | Monday, April 14, 2014

FREMONT, CA: NASA has asserted its commitment to make products and processes benefit the lives of the U.S. citizens and the U.S. economy. In this regard, NASA brings out its software into the public domain for use by ordinary citizens, companies and government agencies to bring about innovations and boost entrepreneurship. With this sharing of technological resource – in this case, the software code – NASA gives maximum input to realize cutting-edge research and development, and help industries meet their design challenges with its software. NASA’s way of bringing its technology down to Earth is to make its software products available to the public domain for greater development of the U.S.

NASA’s software catalog that is made available for public comprises of extensive portfolio of software products for diverse applications, broadly classified into fifteen categories. The software products are arranged alphabetically with the entries including software title, the product ID number, a short description and the software’s specified release type where some of the software descriptions have URLs for additional information or options for the download.

To access the software, one has to identify the case number of the software code. Software Release Authority (SRA) representative is stationed at every NASA center to assist the person with his/her software requests. The interested person can then send an email to the appropriate Center SRA to request a software release form. He would require enclosing the details such as “person name”, “contact information” and a brief idea in about two sentences about the way in which the person would put the software to use. The request form will be then reviewed to see whether the person meets the software’s access requirements and Software Usage Agreement will then be readied and send over to the person via email or Fax for signature. The person would be required to sign the Software Usage Agreement and return it to the SRA.

The software products are available for the following domains: business systems and project management that includes property management and risk management, data servers processing and handling that has algorithms, software codes for data management, routers, servers and storage, materials and processes that cover manufacturing, production processes, composites, system testing that encompasses acoustics, shock, vibration, leak and pressure testing, test management and planning and aerodynamic testing, engine and Motor performance analysis, electronics and electrical power that includes batteries, cabling, grounding, converters, electrical analysis, GPS, telemetry, radio, communications, extra-vehicular activity, structures and mechanisms, environmental science, design and integration tools, crew and life support, autonomous systems, vehicle management, data and image processing and aeronautics.