For our annual list of the year’s most exciting innovations, TIME editors hunted through products and services to select 200 inventions that make the world better, smarter, or just more fun.
A YEAR IN SPACE
Space travel is increasingly routine: humanity made a record 178 successful takeoffs into orbit in 2022. More interest—and investment—led to a spate of scientific advancement this year.
That includes efforts to better understand space, like NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, which gathered samples from an asteroid, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2, built to explore the moon. Other innovations turned their gaze back on our planet, like NASA’s TEMPO, which monitors air quality in the U.S.; Nuview’s LiDAR Satellite Constellation, planned to map Earth in 3D; and Pixxel’s work to detect environmental threats with its Hyperspectral Imaging Satellites.
While scientists expanded the bounds of space exploration via NASA’s Moxie experiment to separate oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere, they also worked to reduce our impact and clean up space trash—which causes risky collisions—with the ClearSpace-1 robotic arm. —Tara Law
OUTDOORS Trunk show
ePlant TreeTag
After wildfires ripped through Maui in August, staff at ePlant set up 15 of their TreeTags on the Lahaina region’s largest banyan tree, which had been damaged, to help arborists understand how to help it recover. The TreeTag sticks into the trunk, combining sensors and AI to measure growth, keep track of water and light inputs, monitor carbon capture, and store the data in the cloud. “Trees have their own unique way of communicating, and our sensors are like their translators,” co-founder and CEO Graham Hine says. Anyone with trees in their yard will find the information helpful in keeping them healthy. —Pranav Dixit
ACCESSIBILITY Playing with braille
Lego Braille Bricks
Once available only through schools and other educational institutions, Lego Braille Bricks—which teach visually impaired children necessary tactile skills—are finally coming to consumers’ homes. The set (currently available in English and French, with more languages on the way) takes the classic 2x4 building brick and modifies its knobs to correspond with the braille alphabet, numbers, and symbols. The pieces are compatible with all Lego products. “We developed these for everyone, so even sighted children and family members can show th
