No kidding, the Japanese are testing Origami planes to see if it will help them with future Space Shuttle designs. They reckon that because the planes are so light they won’t suffer from the stress that today’s shuttles have upon re-entry into the atmosphere, especially those related to heat. The University of Tokyo researches have already tested small origami planes, made out of a special paper, in wind tunnels putting them through wind speeds seven times the speed of sound at temperatures of up to 250C or 482F for 30 seconds at a time.

They hope to release a whole heap from the space station with messages in several languages, sort of message in a bottle theme, to see how it all goes down.