MIT Media Lab designs and tests modular tiles for self-assembling space architecture

2022-05-16T11:50:00-04:00

The MIT Media Lab has shared insights into their pioneering project to build habitats in outer space. Named TESSERAE, the project seeks to create a highly-engineered tile which can be used as a building block for self-assembling, adaptive, reconfigurable structures.

Artist's render of TESSERAE spaceship. Credit: MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative (Artist's Render courtesy of Igor Neminov)

Rather than the traditional method of transporting fixed, rigid habitation modules into outer space, creating structures such as the International Space Station, the team behind TESSERAE believes that their modular, self-assembly method can lower payload weight and reduce construction complexity, while also broadening the possibilities of what future space architecture may look like.

TESSERAE assembly concept: Flat-packed for launch, tiles released to swirl and quasi-stochastically self assemble, target geometry, constellation of multiple docked TESSERAE modules. Credit: Ariel Ekblaw

Each TE...

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MIT Media Lab designs and tests modular tiles for self-assembling space architecture