NASA's Starshade Is A Massive Umbrella That Blocks Starlight

When you're trying to see something and the sun is in your eyes, you probably put your hand up to block it. NASA has run into the same problem with the sun—or should we say, suns. The light from distant stars interferes with their telescopes' ability to see, too. To fix that, they're developing a device that works a lot like your hand does.

Flower Power

Astronomers predict that there's at least one planet orbiting every star we see in the sky, and although we've found thousands of them, we have very few images to show for it. The stars these planets orbit are often billions of times brighter than the light the planets reflect, making it nearly impossible to make them out with even our most powerful telescopes.

NASA's solution to this will sound familiar to most of us: block the light of the star, just like you would block the sun with your hand to see an object in the sky. To this end, engineers are developing a starshade that measures tens of meters across and flies independently thousands of meters away from its telescope. The shade has flower-shaped petals that minimize the bending of light for a darker shadow and clearer images. To make it easier to launch from Earth, ancient principles of origami helped NASA engineers fold the shade in a way that makes it easy to unfurl when it gets to space.

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NASA'S Starshade

Origami In Space