From Nick Greene,
Your Guide to Space / Astronomy.
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In the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the Pentagon, many Federal, state, local, and private agencies swung into action to help with the rescue and recovery efforts. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise sent a remote-sensing scientist to New York following the events of September 11 to aid the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the disaster recovery efforts. Using advanced technologies it has developed for observations of Earth, NASA was able to provide imagery that was used by emergency managers to identify dangerous areas of the World Trade Center site and determine the material composition of the wreckage.

"FEMA asked NASA to provide technical assistance in the use of remote-sensing technology to assist response teams working at New York's World Trade Center. NASA also gave the city expert advice on how to obtain needed technology and imagery commercially and from other government sources," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Associate Administrator for Earth Sciences, NASA Headquarters, Washington.

NASA and its commercial partners have also been working on a number of other ways to help fight terrorism and to prevent and react to terrorist attacks:

• Research aimed at building better greenhouses in space has led to a device that attacks and destroys airborne pathogens -- like Anthrax. KES Science & Technology, Inc., a company which uses technology originally developed for commercial plant growth flight hardware, has developed a potentially life-saving device that has been proven to kill anthrax spores.
• NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center is working with its commercial partners to find ways to combat the bioterrorism issues from anthrax infecting the United States Postal Service to the threat of bioterrorism infecting our livestock and food supplies.
• Microbial-Vac Systemª (M-Vac) plans to research ways to detect anthrax on letters and packages. The M-Vac is used to collect dry powder samples from surfaces of unopened envelopes by going through the small opening at the edge of the sealed envelope. The M-Vac can also collect samples from the outsides of envelopes and boxes with low levels of liquid and can collect 10-20 times more anthrax surrogate (B. subtilis) than a wet cotton swab.
• The Space Communications Technology Center has been developing cameras for face-recognition technology that could make a substantial difference in identifying terrorists.
• ProVision Technologies, a NASA Commerical Space Center, has developed an innovative hyperspectral imaging technology that can directly support anti-terrorism activities. This low-cost, lightweight, unique sensor captures reflected energy from a target and splits this energy into hundreds of images. These images contain information that may be used to identify a wide range of terrorist weapons, such as toxins, camouflage, and altered passports.
• NASA and it's commerican space partners are developing a number of thin-film detectors and devices that can be used for anything from night vision to future computing that could reduce the threat of terrorism in our country. The micro-sized, singe-chip sensors are being developed that can detect and monitor various chemical and bacterial compounds and could make it easier to detect trace amounts of gases and biological agents. As you can see, there a a number of areas of NASA research which can be very beneficial in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks. Improvements in NASA technology have always had far-reaching influence on our lives.

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