"Researchers" hope to launch paper airplanes from space
There's certainly plenty more than just hard science going on in space, and it now looks like a group of researchers from the University of Tokyo are aiming to get in on that action as well. To that end, they've teamed up with the brains behind the Japan Origami Airplane Association to develop an origami aircraft that'll supposedly be capable of surviving the flight from the International Space Station to the Earth's surface. They even seem to have made some progress already, with them set to test an eight centimeter long prototype in the wind tunnel at the University of Tokyo later this week, where it'll face wind speeds up to 5,300 miles per hour. Of course, it'll face a few more obstacles than that in space, although the researchers assure us the plane has been "treated to withstand intense heat."
[Via Tech Digest]
