Japan have invented “origami”, the art of paper folding. But this time Japanese scientists are planning to launch paper plane in outer space. Japanese scientists are trying to figure out whether it is possible to make spacecraft out of paper. Out of Paper? Yes paper. A professor of aerospace engineering named Shinji Suzuki says that paper planes are extremely light so they slow down when the air is thin and can gradually descend. Suzuki adds, “If the said paper planes land safely into space, the paper technology could one day be used to build a new generation of unmanned spacecraft.”

They tested small paper planes in wind tunnels, exposing them to temperatures of up to 250°C and winds up to 7 times the speed of sound. The little paper aircrafts survived the tests without any major scratches. So for their next step, a Japanese astronaut in the International Space Station has to launch a number of paper planes made from paper chemically treated to resist heat and water, from the space station towards Earth.

It is been assumed that these paper planes will take several months for the planes to reach the ground, and it is impossible to tell where they will land exactly. With three quarters of the globe covered with water, there would be a very small chance for any of the little flyers to land on dry soil. But the scientists plan to have some kind of message written on the planes, encouraging anyone who finds them to contact them. This sounds something like sending the Voyager space probe into outer space with messages for any alien life forms it may encounter out there, but in this case hoping to be re-united with the human beings that made it.