20 Unknown & Interesting Facts About NASA – Part 2

According to NASA researchers, an optimal nap will last between 20-30 minutes and a perfect nap will last exactly 26 minutes.

In the 50's NASA recruited Deaf people to research why they didn't get motion sickness. Tests included flights in 'Vomit Comet' and sailing in the rough seas (researchers got violently sick, while Deaf people just played cards happily).

In 1999, NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because half the project staff used imperial measurements, and the other half used metric.

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto, the trip took about 1 minute less than predicted or in a decade-long journey, i.e., NASA's forecast was 99.99998% accurate. That’s the equivalent of forecasting a trip from New York to Boston and being accurate to within four-millionths of a second.

On December 16, 1965, NASA received a transmission from two astronauts: “We have an object, probably in polar orbit... I see a command Module and … and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit.” They transmission then started playing, “Jingle Bells.” The astronauts had just played a Christmas prank on ground control.

Right before launching the two Voyagers, NASA scientists used kitchen-grade aluminum foil to cover critical parts of the probes to protect it from unanticipated radiation at Jupiter. It worked.

In the late 80s, NASA studied house plants as a means of providing cleaner and purer air for their space stations. They found Peace Lilies and Chrysanthemums to be the best all-rounders at air filtering.

NASA makes a movie poster every time they send an expedition to the international space station. Some of the themes are The Matrix, Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

NASA recovered metal from the World Trade Center and used it on Martian rovers as a tribute to those fallen on the 9/11 attacks.

There is a group in NASA that is legitimately researching warp drive technology called The Eagleworks Advanced Propulsion Laboratory whose purpose is to explore advanced and theoretical propulsion technologies that are intended to allow human exploration of the Galaxy within 100 years.