DAISY: NASA has a bright idea...
No... Not that old thing... That's better...
See how NASA is developing LED lighting to make
astronauts lives brighter in ways you'd never imagine.
We'll shine a spot on the future of lighting... Next on Real World.
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DAISY: NASA is developing next generation lighting
technology for current and future missions.
They're taking this, Light Emitting Diodes, to the next level.
You may know it as LED lighting, and you can find a
light just like this at your local hardware store.
But this is the LED lighting assembly NASA has developed...
and the first one has already been installed on the international space station.
DR. TREVOR MURDOCH: We were tasked to produce a
replacement for the general luminair assembly that is on the station.
DAISY: Dr. Trevor Murdoch is a senior Engineer working
with NASA for Bionetics Corporation.
DR. MURDOCH: The GLAs are comprised of a fluorescent
tube that basically lasts, if you’re lucky, for 12 months.
So that’s a lot of uplift, up mass, and change out.
ROBERT SOLER: An incandescent light, basically has a
filament, a little coil and you run current through it.
DAISY: Robert Soler is a lighting engineer for Bionetics Corporation.
ROBERT: That current heats up the coil and the coil starts
radiating, so it starts lighting up.
All that is still heat that’s doing it. There’s only a
small portion of that actual light that we can see,
so the rest of it is just radiated heat.
An LED light will take properties of certain metals
and it runs the current through them and it actually
excites the difference in the metals basically
produce the photons of light. It takes the properties of
these two metals and turns that into light.
DAISY: So Dr Murdock and his colleagues came up with the SSLM,
the Solid State Lighting Module.
This picture shows two units,
the top with a diffuser, the bottom without.
DR. MURDOCH: So with the Solid-State Lighting Module, what we do is we use LEDs,
and it’s developed to be a unit that you can dim.
It also, it straight forward interfaces into station so
you can use the normal interfaces to turn it on and off.
The main difference is it will last about ten years.
That was developed here at KSC under NASA funds.
We actually developed this in a period of about 7 months, from start to finish.
Put it through testing. Currently, there’s one up on
station and there’s others that are ready to go when they’re ready.
DAISY: The LED system is a big winner for NASA.
One SSLM will last as long as 10 GLAs.
That means less maintenance, and less cost.
What’s more, LEDs are more energy efficient than
fluorescent and incandescent lights.
Plus they have superior dimming capabilities.
This NASA LED lighting will make space a brighter place.
And this technology will benefit us here on Earth, too.
DR. MURDOCH: We’re looking at the future here, in your houses,
office buildings, you know, within the next five years,
you’re going to see more LED use, we’re going to reduce
the amount of electricity used, which cuts your green house gasses,
also you haven’t got the landfill problem, because they last longer.
DAISY: And there is another, potentially huge upside to LED lighting.
NASA is experimenting to see how the light can be used to affect mood.
LED lighting can be adjusted to produce a light similar to natural sunlight.
And that can have a positive affect on people.
DR. MURDOCH: The eye is very responsive to 470 nanometers of blue lighting.
By using the LEDs, and having a blue peak, a spectral peak of blue built in,
which we do here, although it shows up white, that blue
will effect your circadian rhythms.
By modulating light at certain frequencies,
we know that it effects brain waves.
DAISY: The International Space Station orbits the
earth nearly 16 times every 24 hours. That means 16 sun
rises and 16 sunsets in the period of one earth day.
This wreaks havoc with astronauts normal sleep cycles.
But the LEDs could changes all that, by providing light
at frequencies that would make them very alert during prime work periods,
then adjusting to allow them to wind down at the end of a work day.
And for us earth bound travelers, the same
technology could be used to significantly reduce jet lag.
So thanks to NASA’s scientists and engineers,
the future of space exploration is bright...
and the positive energy developed in their labs
will make life better here on earth as well.
Keep track of this and all of NASA's exploration missions at www.nasa.gov.
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