Tech transfer at NASA: bringing NASA technology down to earth

• Author: James Nurton
• Position: Freelance writer

In 2022, a US startup called The SMART Tire Company will launch a completely new kind of tire for mountain bikes. Made of a nickel-titanium alloy, the METL tire is airless and superelastic: it will last much longer than standard rubber tires, will never go flat and will lead to much less waste.

But the technology behind the METL tire did not come from a tire or automotive manufacturer. It was developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The idea for a non-pneumatic tire dates back to the lunar rover in the 1960s. Under development ever since, it is also set to be used on the Fetch Rover heading to Mars in 2026.

NASA knew the shape memory alloy radial technology (SMART) could also be used by vehicles on Earth and made it available for licensing. In 2020, The SMART Tire Company founders, Brian Yennie and Earl Cole, won a NASA Startup Studio program and took a license to NASA’s patents to manufacture bicycle tires. “It’s such a cool evolution of the technology,” says Daniel Lockney, Technology Transfer Program Executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. “The company has now moved to Akron, Ohio and they’re planning to expand further.”

The 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act mandates that all scientific and engineering developments be made available for public benefit.

Darryl Mitchell, Technology Transfer Office Chief, Goddard Space Center

It came from outer space

Technology transfer has been central to NASA’s mission since its creation. As Darryl Mitchell, Technology Transfer Office Chief at Goddard Space Center, says: “The 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act mandates that all scientific and engineering developments be made available for public benefit.” Today, NASA has a large technology transfer program across its 10 field centers, says Mitchell: “The program builds advocacy for the agency, creates jobs and creates a future pipeline for certain technologies.”

With some 11,000 scientists and engineers in total, NASA is one of the most productive engines of innovation in the world. The tech transfer program identifies about 1,600 new technologies a year with diverse applications. At Goddard, for example, Mr. Mitchell says a lot of research is in sensors and detectors, which can subsequently be transferred to medical diagnostics.

Since the first human expeditions in space, astronauts have always carried cameras to capture the experience for everyone on the ground. Here an astronaut snaps a self-portrait during a spacewalk. (Photo: Courtesy of NASA)

NASA is the only federal U.S. agency that provides details of its entire IP portfolio on one searchable web portal: there are about 1,500 active patents, of which about 1,100 are available for licensing (the rest are mostly licensed on exclusive terms). In fiscal year 2021, it signed over 200 patent license agreements, the most in its history.

Mr. Lockney took over as program...