From Dustbusters to Nike trainers, 50 years after Apollo 11’s Eagle module touched down on the Moon, Nasa’s star tech created a whole universe of gadgets that changed life on Earth

Nasa’s surplus rocket fuel is used to help dispose of landmines in former war zones. Thiokol Propulsion, the Nasa contractor that built Space Shuttle rocket motors, used the fuel to develop a flare that destroys land mines where they are buried, without using explosives. Safe to handle, the flare is placed next to the land mine and ignited from a safe distance. If you’ve ever cleaned out the corners of your sofa or the nooks and crannies of your car with a Dustbuster, then you have Nasa to thank. But it wasn’t originally developed to collect dirt. The space agency approached Black & Decker to create a small vacuum unit to suck up small rocks and dust on the surface of the Moon as astronauts gathered samples. Coupling it with technology developed for Nasa’s cordless drill, the Dustbuster debuted in 1979.

In 1962, Wally Schirra, one of Nasa’s origial Mercury Seven astronauts, was the first to use lightweight, cordless headsets with noise-cancelling technology as he orbited the Earth. Nasa developed advanced digital imaging technology to get the sharpest images it could while mapping the surface of the Moon. This science was later employed in the creation of CAT scans (computerised axial tomography) which show a cross-sectional image of the body using special X-rays coupled with a computer. The tool firefighters use to extricate people from crushed cars and trucks uses an explosive charge in “pyrotechnicallyactuated” cartridges developed by Nasa to separate the huge booster rockets from the Space Shuttle.