Awards & Nominations
Terráqueos has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
Univergami
High-Level Project Summary
Origami is the ancient art of paper folding. Despite being a very ancient art, it is used today in space projects. Launche into space are expensive, so it is recommended to use compact and lightweight objects, with space origami, it is completely possible.Origami principles are used to increase the flexibility of large and thin structures, which are usefull in solar panel or in huge devices as the James Webb Space Telescope, The most complex problems require the simplest solutions, in this case, finding inspiration in art developed 2000 years ago to modern humanity problems.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
When someone speaks of origami, a classic little boat comes to our mind or the famous paper crane, but origami really goes way beyond that barrier, and it has some interesting applications.
Origami is the ancient art of paper folding, which means it can transform the potential of a piece of material without changing its overall volume or weight, some simple examples of this can be found in a jumping frog or a standing crane but by using these principles we can solve some of the most challenging problems in space engineering.
When we talk about space engineering there are two main problems when it comes to the cargo, the size and the weight, man-made space structures need to be large and origami principles are often used as a method for optimizing space travel cargo. the main idea behind this, is that origami applied to structures can increase the flexibility of big structures for its deployment after arriving to its desired destination.
Another important yet a bit more counterintuitive advantage of using origami in space structures is the improved accuracy in robotics motion, the mechanical nature of folding makes far more accurate and precise for robots to interpret and for humans to program.
The James Webb Space Telescope isn’t an exception, in fact it is a great example of applying origami in space engineering. For it to fit into a rocket, it must fold up. Whether it is the primary mirror or the sunshield many parts of Webb are designed to deploy or unfold once in space.
The James Webb Space telescope is NASA’s next premier space science observatory and will fulfill the agency’s vision to “discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity”.
One of Webb telescope’s science goals is to look back through time to when galaxies were young, to achieve this, it requires a large mirror, since a telescope’s sensitivity is directly related to the size of the mirror area that collects light form the object in observation.
To measure the light from these distant galaxies, Webb telescope’s scientist and engineers determined that a primary mirror of 6.5 meters (21ft 4in) across is required, if it was made the same way the Hubble telescope’s mirror was, I would be too heavy to launch into orbit, so it had to be only one tenth of the mass oh Hubble’s mirror per unit area, yet strong enough.
Gold coated mirror segments from beryllium which is strong, and light were the appropriate material to solve this issue. (Each segment weighs approximately 20 kg). The 18 hexagonal shaped mirror segments are about 1.32 meters in diameter and its secondary mirror is .74 meters in diameter. The hexagonal shape allows for a roughly circular segmented mirror with a “High filling factor” meaning the segments would fit together with minimum gaps while maintaining a circular profile which focuses the light into the most compact region of detectors.
To focus the mirrors correctly, the primary mirror segments and secondary mirror segments are moved by six actuators attached to the back of each mirror piece. To align the primary mirror segments as a single large mirror, each mirror is aligned to 1/10,000th the thickness of a human hair.
Sometimes the most complex problems require the simplest of solutions and finding such a simple, yet elegant solution might seem like a miracle. But the thing about miracles is that they happen when we least expect them, either by using inspiration in nature or like finding the solution to a modern humanity problem in paper art developed 2000 years ago and all of this makes us wonder where the source for the next big thing will might occur.
Space Agency Data
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/features/origami.html
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/main/index.html
https://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html
Hackathon Journey
It was a unique and challenging experience. Being our first space hackathon, it was a considerable challenge, as engineers, we tried to find simple solutions to big problems, and what better way to use origami for this type of challenge.
We learn a lot of this hackathon, everything is possible if you work smart and in a multidiciplinary teamwork.
I encourage and recommend to all the people join this type of experience. Thank to all the team members, to all the staff and all the participants to be part of this. Thank you very much.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E12uju1vgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpVz3UrSsE4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly3hMBD4h5E
Tags
#cience&art #nasaspaceappchallenge #spaceapps #space #spacechallenge # origami #jameswebbspacetelescope #spaceorigami
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.