Have you ever tried to catch a pop fly with the sun in your eyes? You can’t see a thing—until you throw up a hand to block the glare. NASA has a similar problem. Their telescopes are trying to spot tiny, dim planets orbiting distant stars—but the stars are so bright, they wash everything else out. The solution? A massive space sunshade that can block light from just one star at a time—like putting your hand up in front of the sun, but from 93 million miles away.
The catch? The sunshade has to be huge… and also fold up small enough to ride into orbit on a rocket. Not exactly a standard engineering problem.
Hmm… If there’s something big… you need to fold up small… who you gonna call? (Cue the Ghostbusters Theme…) An origami master!
Enter Dr. Robert Lang, kid origami enthusiast-turned-physicist working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-turned-full-time Origami Master.
He’d already lent his folding expertise to car airbags and a foldable deep-space telescope lens, among others. His deep understanding of folds and structure turned out to be exactly what NASA needed for this project. His prototype “starshade” would launch in a rocket, then open like a flower in space—blocking sunlight, capturing starlight, and looking beautiful doing it.
(Want your kids to fold their own starshade? Grab the free printable on the Jet Propulsion Lab’s website.)
Origami might look like art, but it’s also applied math—specifically topology, the study of how shapes fold and transform. And it’s not just paper folding: beekeeping has inspired improvements in airport landing gear, knitting has helped model complex biological systems, and birdwatching has led to advances in drone design. Here are some more real-world engineering breakthroughs sparked by nature.
Passions that seem random often turn out to be research in disguise.
Thinking differently—thinking creatively—is often the key to solving the problems no one else knows how to crack.
Here’s what we can teach our kids:
- Passion isn’t a side quest. That “useless” hobby might be the very thing that solves a billion-dollar problem. (Just ask NASA.)
- Encourage unlikely combos. Mixing music and math, or art and engineering, trains kids to think in ways textbooks can’t.
- Don’t rush to redirect. If your child’s fixated on something weird or “impractical,” lean in. It might be the start of something brilliant.
So the next time your child disappears into a rabbit hole of obsessions—whether it’s paper folding, mushroom hunting, or designing mazes—remember: they might be building the exact skills the world needs.
P.S. If you want to help your kids mix art and engineering, you can start by learning to code through drawing. Check it out!