Audience
Students
Grade Levels
Grades 5-8, Grades 9-12
Subject
Engineering Design, Technology, Telescopes, Photography and Imaging
Type
Hands-on Activities
In the same way we shield our eyes from the glare of the Sun by placing our hand at arm’s length in front of our faces, a starshade could shield a telescope’s camera from the light of a distant star. When it’s unfurled, the sunflower-shape starshade is about the size of a baseball diamond! That’s way too big to fit in a rocket, so NASA has developed a way of folding it – like you would origami – for launch. In fact, NASA brought in origami experts to help create the perfect design. Follow their lead and make your own paper origami model of starshade’s “inner disk optical shield.”