It's a world flight record even though it only lasted 26.1 seconds. Not your usual record, because it's origami, and it was achieved by the president of the Japan Origami Plane Association. Takuo Toda just missed matching his personal best of 27.9 seconds, but that one was with a plane that had been made with tape. Read more
Here are step-by-step instructions for how to make an origami x-wing. It is done using a 15cm-square of thin paper, coloured on one side and white on the other - the x-wing ends up coloured all over.
If someone sees an origami paper airplane folded into the shape of a space shuttle lying on the ground and picks it up, the message on it, written in several different languages, will read: "This airplane flew from the International Space Station. Please return the plane to Japan Origami Plane Association."
It will be sprayed with chemicals to give it a protective glass-type coating and researchers believe that, despite hitting 200C, it will not burn up on re-entry into our atmosphere. The experiment, due to take place in November, is the idea of Takuo Toda, head of the Japan Origami Plane Association.
Who knew origami was this multifaceted? The Japan Origami Airplane Association is folding up a paper airplane which will be able to survive the flight from the International Space Station to the Earths surface. Researchers from the University of Tokyo began testing the strength and heat resistance of an 3.1 inch long prototype on January 17 in an ultra-high-speed wind tunnel that will blast out wind speeds up to 5,300 miles-per-hour. The origami craft, which is shaped like the Space Shuttle, has been treated to withstand intense heat.
A paper airplane is to be launched from the International Space Station to mark a new dawn in space travel. The eight inch plane is the result of an unlikely collaboration between a Japanese professor of aerospace engineering and origami masters to design a novel kind of spacecraft.