In their attempt to prototype a reusable crew module for spaceflight, undergraduates Anastasia Muszynski, Dawson Beatty and Andrew Pfefer found unexpected inspiration in the art of origami and received vital support from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).
Muszynski’s passion for paper folding helped the team solve the complex challenge of engineering a module that can be tightly folded for transport and inflated in space—a technique called Miura. The concept proved to be what she remembers as “one of those creative ideas that just might work.”
Muszynski, Beatty and Pfefer worked on Project Miura under the mentorship of Brian Sanders of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium and received funding from UROP in the form of individual student grants.
Each year UROP provides funding to support hundreds of student-faculty partnerships for projects in all fields of study. Explore opportunities at the UROP website.
