At a co-working space in Roslindale, MA, in early August, Aurelia Institute showed off a mock-up of a space habitat called TESSERAE, which is short for Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments. The structure looks like a futuristic, one-story-tall soccer ball. The team described how the station’s tiles, each about six-feet tall and wide, would come together.
The idea is to make the structure as compact as possible for launch. “Right now, anything that goes up is in the very rigid structure of the payload [fairing], which is what sits on top of the rocket,” says Stephanie Sjoblom, Aurelia Institute’s vice president of strategy and business development. “With this technology, we’re creating tiles that we stack kind of like a flat-packed IKEA box.”
Following a successful launch, the tiles would be thrown into space in a balloon-like structure or net to stop them from drifting away. The net would keep the tiles, which have strong magnets in their edges, close enough for magnetic attraction. The hope is that the tiles would then snap together on their own into the correct configuration the first time. A combination of sensors and magnetometers can determine if they don’t correctly assemble. In that case, a current pulses through the magnets to break apart the incorrectly configured tiles and try again. Following assembly, electrical and plumbing systems can be mounted by hand.
Modules and inflatables
So far, the team has successfully assembled smaller hand-sized tiles in space several times, including during Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission to the ISS in 2022. They have yet to build a to-scale model of TESSERAE in space and say that construction would likely require a partner.
“It’s hard for us to give an accurate figure of how much longer it will take for it to be human-crewed,” says Ekblaw. “It probably depends on if we get a partnership with [an organization like] NASA or Axiom. But certainly by the 2030s.” Aurelia won’t share how much money they’ve raised or spent on this work, but they said it has been funded in part by NASA grants, corporate sponsorships, and philanthropic donors.
There are lots of groups working on space stations. Axiom Space is working on its own orbital station, the first module of which it aims to launch in 2026 and temporarily attach to the ISS. Blue Origin and Sierra Space are working on Orbital Reef, a project to support up to 10 people at a time in a “mixed-use business park.” These stations will rely on humans for their construction, and launching the pieces will probably take a few trips.
There’s another way to make something compact for launch: inflate it in orbit. NASA has already done this—its experimental BEAM habitat, which is connected to the ISS, launched in 2016 and has stored cargo. Sierra Space wants to make inflatable habitats as large as a three-story building, although they’ve yet to test these designs in space.
