Expanding Origami Solar Panel Structure

The horus uses an expanding ring structure to unfold a solar membrane.

Expanding origami solar panel structure.

Because the habitat will have to be transported with a hercules plane and potentially later by a rocket there is very strict volume requirements. Origami has been a hot topic in technology recently. Origami the art of paper folding thus naturally provides inspirations for deployable structures. This type of origami has probably the greatest application potential in engineering structures 1 2 ranging from solar panels space mirrors and aircraft wings to robots because most materials used in these applications are relatively rigid.

From digestible origami pills that could provide alternatives to invasive surgery to solar panels that could be tightly packed in an aircraft and deploy after launch at the heart of origami s. Brian trease at nasa s jet propulsion laboratory has been thinking about how it could be used in spacecraft. Space is a great place for a solar panel because you don t have to worry about nighttime and there are no clouds and no weather he said. System must be lightweight and pack a large area of solar panels into a small volume for transport.

Solar power origami style nasa. Unfold it and you ve got a structure 82 feet 25 meters across. Their 1 20th scale tabletop prototype expands to a deployed diameter of 4 1 feet 1 25 meters. To date all kinematic modeling of rigid origami treats the paper as having zero thickness.

Howell said origami through compliant mechanisms is a perfect fit for space exploration. This well known origami fold was invented by japanese astrophysicist koryo miura. A deployable structure is a structure that can reconfigure and change shape size mainly from folding and unfolding and has many applications from daily essentials e g umbrella vascular stents to solar panels for spacecraft. We ll utilize the high albedo and reflectiveness of the snow.

The exterior of the habitat will be covered in solar cells to maximize the energy generation. Applying origami principles on rigid silicon solar panels a material considerably thicker than the paper used for the traditional japanese art the byu conceived solar array would unfold to.