The King of Paper Airplanes.

New Scientist reports on Japanese space scientists creating origami that’s out of this world:

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….

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.

Shinji Suzuki, of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Tokyo, is now working on creating a tiny, ultra-light tracking device so he can find his paper airplane once it makes it back to Earth.

More origami spaceplane coverage at Mainichi Daily News.

Entered on 25 January 2008 at 6:44 in the Science file | 2 Observations | Print Print

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  1. [...] Remember the origami space plane? [...]

    Pingback by The Guild of Scientific Troubadours » Space Boomerang - will it return? — 11 February 2008 #

  2. [...] aims for space station descent”, New Scientist, 21 January 2008, as used in the post The King of Paper Airplanes (and referenced in the Space Boomerang [...]

    Pingback by The Guild of Scientific Troubadours » SONG: My Fingertips Are Weightless. — 24 March 2008 #

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