Sometimes there are profound questions in life that must be answered, like "What is the meaning of existence?", "Are we alone in the universe?" or "What happens if you throw a paper airplane from the International Space Station?"
Luckily, that third one has finally been answered, because of course someone would eventually.
A new paper from Maximilien Berthet and Kojiro Suzuki from the University of Tokyo looks at "the dynamics of an origami space plane during Earth atmospheric reentry" – in other words, what happens when you throw a paper plane out of the ISS.
First, let's go over some technical ideas that are necessary to understanding this seemingly simple concept.
Related: ESA Report Says There's Too Much Junk in Earth Orbit Trunk
Origami literally means folded paper in Japanese, and in this case the authors decided to make their paper airplane out of a standard A4 sheet of white paper. The end result looks like something a third grader would have made up to annoy their friend sitting in front of them in class, but with a lot more aerodynamic modeling.
Once the software model was made, it was time to put it to the test. The ISS orbits at around 400 kilometers (about 250 miles), so the authors decided to launch the plane from that height, and at a speed similar to that of the ISS itself - 7800 meters/second.
That speed might seem likely it would shred any plane made out of paper, but at 400 km altitude the atmosphere isn't thick enough to do much damage… yet.
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That's actually the case for the majority of the descent back to the ground. From 400 km down to around 120 km altitude, the plane stays relatively stable, given the lack of air.
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