NASA Research Boosts LED Lamps for Home and Garden

 

NASA's lighting research helped develop biologically oriented LED technology for everyday life on Earth – giving people better rest and helping plants grow.

From 1997 to 2017, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) looked into how long-duration spaceflight affected people, funded with grants from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. One area of interest was light sources and how they affected brain activity.

Lockley and Brainard’s research found that exposure to excess blue light at the wrong time could throw off people’s body clocks. This happened because the body’s production of melatonin, a key hormone for managing circadian rhythms, was inhibited when certain wavelengths of blue light hit photoreceptors in the eyes.