Aurelia Institute Develops a Customizable Space Station

Aurelia Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit space startup, wants to revolutionize space architecture through the use of self-constructing, endlessly-customizable smart tiles that don’t require human supervision.

Why It Flies: The new space race is not about just getting to places like the Moon, but colonizing them. And, constructing space stations in orbit and buildings on far-off planets is a difficult, costly, and laborious task. Letting structures build themselves could put spacefaring into hyperspeed.

Behind the Design: Aurelia Institute CEO Ariel Ekblaw, chief designer Sana Sharma, and advisory member Danielle DeLatte launched the company while they were grad students at MIT, reports Fast Company.

• The company’s flagship development are “magnetized computerized tiles that self-assemble in orbit into changeable geodesic spheres called ‘TESSERAE.’”
• The tiles, shaped in either hexagons or pentagons, can be launched into space, deploy a net or balloon to keep them together in orbit, and then initiate a program to autonomously attract to each other and connect into sphere-shaped structures.
• Each tile is outfitted with various sensors to ensure that they all make a successful connection to other tiles. If the connection isn’t successful, they simply try again.
• Tiles can pop off and be reconfigured to create new structures as needed. So, an astronaut can be in a pressurized section of the station, while the tiles are constructing a new area.

The Future: Handsized-versions of the tiles — which Ekblaw describes as “space Legos that build themselves in orbit” — have already been successfully tested in microgravity aboard the ISS. Aurelia is still working on building the full-scale 37-foot tiles and how to seal and pressurize the sTESSERAE, so there’s still a ways to go before the tech is ready for primetime. But an eventual rollout could be key to creating a space port between Earth and Mars.