NASA is making available to the public, at no cost, more than 1,000 codes with its release on April 10 of a new online software catalog.

Organized into 15 broad categories, the new catalog offers a wide variety of applications for use by industry, academia, other government agencies and the general public.

"Software is an increasingly important element of the agency's intellectual asset portfolio, making up about a third of our reported inventions every year," said Jim Adams, NASA's deputy chief technologist. "We are excited to be able to make that software widely available to the public with the release of our new software catalog."

The technologies featured in the software catalog cover project management systems, design tools, data handling and image processing, as well as solutions for life support functions, aeronautics, structural analysis and robotic and autonomous systems. The codes represent NASA's best solutions to a wide array of complex mission requirements.

Each NASA code has been evaluated for access restrictions and designated for a specific type of release, ranging from codes that are open to all U.S. citizens to codes that are restricted to use by other federal agencies.

"This is the first time the list of all the agency's software is accessible in one place and sorted into categories," said Danny Garcia, chair, NASA Software Release Authority Working Group. "Our group led the compilation of the software catalog for the agency, editing 1000 code descriptions from 10 centers written by many separate authors, so that the catalog will look uniform and be as user-friendly as possible. Future versions of the catalog will be auto-generated by the NASA Technology Transfer System database when someone clicks on the link at the website and will always include the latest codes available."

"NASA is committed to the principles of open government," Adams said. "By making NASA resources more accessible and usable by the public, we are encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Our Technology Transfer Program is an important part of bringing the benefit of space exploration back to Earth for the benefit of all people."

NASA’s Technology Transfer Program, managed by the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, ensures technologies developed for exploration and discovery missions are broadly available to the public.

To access the software catalog, and for more information on NASA's Tech Transfer program, visit:

http://technology.nasa.gov/