Origami spaceplane aims for space station descent

A paper plane might not seem ideally suited to space travel, but a Japanese engineering professor is collaborating with origami masters to design a small paper spacecraft that could be launched from the International Space Station and survive a descent to Earth.

A prototype was successfully tested in a wind tunnel last week.

“This origami airplane might some day actually fly,” says Jim Longuski, an expert in aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in the US.

Longuski, who was not involved in the project, says that offbeat notions often generate exciting new ideas. “I don’t think it’s crazy at all,” he told New Scientist.

The novel craft could inspire new designs for lightweight re-entry vehicles, or for planes to explore the upper reaches of the atmosphere, according to Shinji Suzuki, from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Tokyo.

The origami space plane will be a similar design, Suzuki says, but only about 20 centimetres long and with a rounded nose to minimize aerodynamic heating.

It will also be chemically processed to incorporate silicon in the paper structure, increasing its heat resistance, although the plane shouldn’t be subjected to the fiery temperatures endured by heavier objects as they hurtle toward Earth.

When released from the International Space Station, it would be travelling at Mach 20, Suzuki says, but thanks to a large surface area and low weight it should slow considerably as it falls through the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.

A smaller prototype paper plane was tested up to Mach 7 and about 200 °C in a hypersonic wind tunnel in Tokyo last week.