Origami – The Science within the art
By: Rashmita Kashyap
Tags: Science Communication, NASA, Space, Science Fiction, Origami Blog

Origami – The Science within the art

Have you ever imagined the power of a piece of paper? Paper was said to be documented during the Eastern Han period (25 – 220 CE), when paper was primarily used for artwork, writing and for packaging staffs. In 105 CE, Chai Lun, a Chinese court official has brought up the idea of paper. His paper making skills mainly involved fishnet, old rags, hemp waste and bark of trees. During the 6th century, Buddhist monks carried the concept of paper making to Korea and Japan. In 1680, Ihara Saikaku, a Japanese poet first described “Origami” through butterflies. The word “Origami” is compounded of two Japanese words: “ori” means “to fold” and “gami” means “paper”. In 1797, Senbazuru orikata, the first origami instruction book was published revealing several origami stories from Japanese culture.

Origami is the ancient art of Japanese paper-folding. For years, it has been used for creating stunning works of art. But we never focused on the fact that origami can be used in many practical applications like car airbags, stents and even in space applications.

Robert Salazar, a technologist from NASA stated that, "Seeing the single uncut sheet, it has everything you need to create all of the origami that has ever been folded. It is all in the single sheet so there is endless potential".

His endless efforts on paper-folding sheets have been appreciated at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The underlying mathematics of origami has proved an efficient technique of folding large thin sheets used in the biggest rockets in NASA, which is only 5 meters in diameter. Eventually, many space projects have used the folding principles of Origami like the solar array wings on the ISS which uses a “Z” folding pattern and the Mars Phoenix lander used a fan - folded solar array, called the Ultra Flex.

Have you ever tried to take a picture of someone when the bright sun is beating down on them? Your subject is washed out and it is impossible to capture any detail. Well, this is the same problem faced by astronomers while trying to image exoplanets. For an earth sized exoplanet orbiting a sun like star, they can’t be imaged in detail, because the stars they circle are much brighter than they are. This is when the Starshade comes in, to help suppress that bright light to better help astronomers learn more about these mysterious planets and look for bio signatures for life. Starshade is roughly the size of a baseball diamond. So, the researchers came up with a way of folding up these very large structures into space that can be launched inside a rocket. And once it gets into space it can unfold itself. This giant space flower may look simple in design but not in mathematical implementation with a requirement of accuracy in millimeters. This project has been developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. The Starshade can be used with a multi-purpose telescope designed to make observations that could be useful to astronomers working in fields other than exoplanets.

Origami has been practised on Earth for years, and scientists will continue to draw inspiration from it to help package big space structures more efficiently. From solar sails that use sunlight for propulsion, to sun – shades for space telescopes like Gaia, and the James Webb which is launched in 2019.

When it comes to the future of space exploration, if we want to think big we also have to think small.