Space stations break down. Satellites get damaged. Repairing them requires launching replacement components on rockets. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now exploring an ...

Robots are already transforming industries here on Earth. The next big challenge is to build massive structures in orbit, hundreds of thousands of miles above Earth. A new partnership between the UK ...

The US military is brainstorming ways to build large structures in space, from telescope antennas to elevator tethers. By growing these objects in microgravity using biological organisms, they hope to ...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — which has been known to fund the development of sci-fi-sounding ideas like flying aircraft carriers or massive streetlights on the Moon — is now ...

Abstract: Modern deployable space structures have enabled spectacular missions like the James Webb Space Telescope, but they are constrained by fairing size and by a tradeoff between deployed size and ...

Deployable composite structures constitute a critical enabling technology for modern and future space missions, offering compact stowage and reliable on-orbit expansion of large apertures, booms and ...

Aerospace undergrad Alex Kuehnle observes PhD student Ivan Wu in the composites laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Because it’s costly and cumbersome to transport large ...