For decades, scientists have been utilizing concepts from origami in order to create more efficient ways to fold, store, and transport materials. This is especially relevant in the aerospace field, where most of the notable news stories involving origami and tech come from. The most notable recent example has been the StarShade, used to protect telescopes in space from damage (see article: https://eandt.theiet.org/2023/02/13/how-origami-inspires-world-changing-technology). Essentially, it is absurdly expensive and difficult to bring materials up into space, and everything needs to be as small as possible in order to fit into narrow and aerodynamic rockets. In this case, the design of the StarShade, like similar devices in the past, was heavily inspired by origami design. As stated in the article, “The ability to fold two-dimensional structures into complex, yet compact three-dimensional shapes is especially valuable to space sciences and missions,” and thus origami has been a frequent topic in this field.

The video below is a great introduction to the StarShade as well as showing how it unfolds once it has reached its destination.

Video: NASA. Retrieved from: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/flower-power-starshade-unfurls-in-space