Origami Engineering Unlocks Spacecraft Design Challenges
Aerospace engineering professor Manan Arya refers to it as the “suitcase problem,” a challenge not of clothing but of fitting vast, deployable structures into the confined volume of a rocket fairing. Speaking to Global News, Arya explained that engineers must fold these large-scale devices for launch and “then unfold when they get to space.” The motivation is clear: “The reason we need origami for space applications is because we want to launch structures in space that are just amazingly big,” he said.
Arya’s work has long focused on an astronomical obstacle—blocking starlight to reveal faint exoplanets. The numbers are daunting. NASA estimates there are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, yet from Earth only a few thousand of the nearest are visible. Arya noted that when searching for Earth-like planets near Sun-like stars, “the reflected light from the planets is about 10 billion times fainter in the light of the star.” The glare makes direct imaging of such worlds extraordinarily difficult.
For Arya, origami’s ability to transform something large into something compact offers a path forward. The Japanese art of paper folding, with roots stretching back centuries, has evolved into a modern engineering toolkit. “It was really in the ’60s and ’70s when mathematicians and academics got interested in the art of origami,” Arya told The New Reality. “Since that time, they’ve developed this fantastic toolset of ideas … that were available to me that I could just pick up and run with.”
Born in New Delhi, Arya was captivated by space from an early age, though he realized that the astronaut’s life might not suit him. “I like to sit and think for a long time before I take action. I’m terribly not useful in emergencies,” he said. After moving to Canada in 2003, he pursued an engineering degree at the University of Toronto, where his fascination with deployable spacecraft structures—particularly solar sails—led him to origami.
That interest carried him to the California Institute of Technology, which manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Upon graduating, Arya joined JPL, fulfilling a long-held ambition. “I had dreams that maybe it would be fantastic if I could go to the epicentre, which is NASA, and maybe contribute there. I never actually thought it would happen, but it kind of did,” he said.
At JPL, Arya began work on the starshade, a lightweight, petal-shaped disk designed to fly in formation with a space telescope. When deployed, it would span roughly the size of a baseball diamond, blocking a star’s light so the telescope could capture images of nearby exoplanets. The engineering challenge lies in launching such a vast structure within a rocket’s limited payload diameter of about five meters. Origami folding patterns enable the starshade to be compacted for launch and precisely unfurled in space. Arya described it as “a fantastic application of origami engineering in space.”
NASA has already demonstrated origami’s utility in missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope, whose segmented mirror and multilayer sunshield were folded for launch and deployed in orbit. The high-resolution images Webb now delivers serve as inspiration for technologies like starshade.
While starshade remains a developmental concept rather than an official mission, Arya emphasizes the importance of readiness: engineers keep such designs “in our back packets for future missions.” His research has expanded beyond spacecraft, applying origami principles to robotics and biomedical devices. Folding mechanisms can enable compact, efficient systems in fields where space constraints and precise deployment are critical.
Arya acknowledges the gradual nature of his work’s impact. “Parts of me wish that my work would have more immediate impact,” he said. “At the same time, I’m satisfied with the idea that I’m doing work that is foundational for the next generation of technologies.”
