Could Architecture In Space Make A Greener Earth?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Short Wave – “Could Architecture In Space Make A Greener Earth?”

Date: December 16, 2025
Host: Regina Barber (NPR)
Guest: Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, Space Architect & Founder of Aurelia

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Overview

This Short Wave episode dives into the potential for space-based architecture—not just as science fiction, but as practical infrastructure to improve life on Earth. Host Regina Barber speaks with Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, a pioneering “space architect,” about how innovations in modular, self-assembling habitats and space-based manufacturing could shift heavy industry off-planet, support ecological restoration on Earth, and even beam clean energy down from space.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Real Bottleneck in Space: Real Estate, Not Rockets

• Old Model: For decades, space station construction required aluminum modules built and welded on Earth, then launched as whole units ([03:50]).
• New Approach: Ariel’s “tesserae” concept: modular building units (like magnetic space Legos) that self-assemble in microgravity, overcoming rocket size limitations ([03:50]-[04:31]).
  • Quote:
    "The bottleneck isn't rockets anymore, it's real estate. It's trying to get bigger volumes of space stations in orbit."
    — Ariel Ekblaw [01:11]
• Tech Inspiration: Mimics biomimetic systems—how proteins and DNA self-assemble and self-correct inside bodies ([04:31]).

2. Tesserae Structures: Modular, Magnetic, and AI-Powered

• Function: Each tile is AI-enabled, checks its own assembly, and uses powerful edge magnets to self-correct while assembling in space ([04:31]).
  • Quote:
    "The tiles have essentially like AI built into the pieces themselves...inspired by biomimetic systems like how proteins and DNA self assemble..."
    — Ariel Ekblaw [04:31]
• Name Origin: “Tesserae” is a nod both to ancient Roman mosaics and an acronym:
  Tessellated electromagnetic Space structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable Adaptive Environments ([05:10]).
• Main Challenges Remaining:
  • Air-tightness—many seals and gaskets are necessary for livable habitats.
  • Radiation shielding and overall crew safety ([05:55]).

3. Space Agriculture and Applications for Earth

• Resourcefulness in Space = Innovation for Earth:
  • Lessons learned from climate control, air recycling, and food production in space are invaluable for disaster-stricken or resource-limited Earth environments ([06:34]).
  • Ex: Recent collaboration with Daikin to test “space gardens,” including humidity and CO₂ management ([06:34]).
• Potential for Shift Work & Human-Robot Collaboration:
  • Future will see both AI/data centers and human presence working together in orbit ([07:44]).
  • "I think we will have humans. I think we're a critical part of exploration..." — Ariel Ekblaw [07:44]

4. Habitat Logistics: Living in Space vs. Commuting from Earth

• Health Considerations:
  • Long-term human habitation in microgravity weakens bones and organs; commuting is more feasible for now ([08:39]).
  • In the future, artificial gravity (habitat spin) could enable longer stays.
  • Quote:
    "What really makes more sense is...you commute to do your work...and when you're done...then you come back down to Earth."
    — Ariel Ekblaw [08:39]

5. Environmental Impacts & Clean Space Operations

• Rocket Launches & the Carbon Footprint:
  • Space industry is currently less impactful than aviation, but growth demands innovation in clean fuels ([09:50]).
• Space Junk/Debris:
  • FAA regulations now demand a clear disposal plan for objects sent to orbit ([10:29]).
  • Cleaning strategies include magnetic “Pac-Man”-style collectors ([10:29]):
    • Quote:
      "Space debris is...an early tragedy of the commons...There's a couple different ways to deal with it."
      — Ariel Ekblaw [10:29]

6. Space-Based Solar Power: Beaming Clean Energy to Earth

• Giant Orbital Solar Arrays:
  • Built robotically, self-assembling (no humans exposed to risk) ([11:48]).
  • Captures “raw unfiltered sunlight” above clouds, then beams it to Earth.
  • Could deliver abundant, green electricity (e.g., power New York City at night) ([12:24]).
  • Quote:
    "You could have New York City powered at night by a beam from space."
    — Ariel Ekblaw [12:24]
• Safety & Ecological Impacts:
  • The energy beam is highly targeted and won’t disrupt city rhythms or wildlife. Planes can fly through it safely ([13:26]).
  • "It's a concentrated beam...it's not going to affect animals, it's not going to affect homes, seasons… And… a plane can fly through it." — Ariel Ekblaw [13:26, 13:53]

7. Timeline: From Demo to Utility

• Power Beaming:
  • Demo (airplane-based) already shown; expect first space-orbit power beaming demos within 5 years ([14:22]).
  • Utilities scale (cities/regions powered from space): realistic within a decade ([14:22]).
    • Quote:
      "I think inside five years they're going to have power beaming demos from orbit. ... Ten year mark, you're thinking about power utilities from space, fundamental green energy and much more abundant."
      — Ariel Ekblaw [14:22]

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Notable Quotes

• "Let them [humans] have a beautiful existence on Earth. But off world the heavy industry and slowly let Earth recover as a garden planet."
  — Ariel Ekblaw [01:33]
• "You got to lean into the nerd dub."
  — Ariel Ekblaw [05:31]
• "This is a really important question for the space industry because…if we succeed in all of these launches, we very well may scale up to the point where [carbon footprint is] significant."
  — Ariel Ekblaw [09:50]

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Memorable Moments

• The ancient Roman mosaic restoration trip that inspired the “tesserae” name and approach [05:10].
• Realistic discussion of the limits of long-term residency in space—“Steady state. Turns out it's quite hard to live in microgravity.” [08:39]
• Comparing space junk collection to “Pac Man in space” [10:29].
• Concerns about power-beaming and public fears—host jokes about “super villainy,” guest explains real-world safeguards [13:00].

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Key Timestamps

| Time | Segment or Insight | |--------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:11 | Bottleneck in space is real estate, not rockets | | 03:50 | How tesserae modular self-assembly works | | 05:10 | Mosaic inspiration and meaning of the “tesserae” name | | 05:55 | Challenges: air seals and radiation shielding | | 06:34 | Lessons from space agriculture for Earth | | 07:44 | Human-robot work symbiosis and commuting to orbit | | 08:39 | Health impacts of microgravity, commuting over settlement | | 09:50 | Carbon footprint of launches, planning for scale | | 10:29 | Regulation and innovation in space debris management | | 11:48 | Building solar panels in space, robotic assembly | | 12:24 | Beaming energy from space, safety features | | 14:22 | Timelines for power beaming from space |

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Conclusion

Dr. Ariel Ekblaw and Regina Barber explore how pushing the frontier of building in space—using AI, robotics, and modular design—could help Earth by relocating industry, cleaning up space, and delivering renewable energy. Science fiction is on its way to becoming science reality, with a global green benefit.

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Transcript

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Regina Barber]

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. More than 60 years ago, the Soviet Union successfully launched the first man into space. Today, the number of people who've been to space is in the hundreds. Still, that's a far cry from widespread space travel.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I have been obsessed with the science fiction idea of humans living in space for a long time.

[Regina Barber]

Ariel ekblah got her PhD in aerospace structure and design, a crucial step towards her dream of shifting space life from sci fi to reality.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Nowadays I go by space architect, thinking about the future of infrastructure in orbit.

[Regina Barber]

Step 2. Ariel founded the company Aurelia with two other women, Danielle Dalot and Sana Sharma to get more people to space more often and for longer periods of time. She says the challenge now is building in space.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

The bottleneck isn't rockets anymore, it's real estate. It's trying to get bigger volumes of space stations in orbit.

[Regina Barber]

Her solution? The equivalent of magnetic Legos in space called tesserae structures that would self assemble into large livable structures in orbit. And Ariel says the reason she's so excited for more humans to live in space isn't to escape the Earth.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I love Earth. Earth is the best home we'll ever have. One of the things we're most excited for in the space context is can we off world heavy industry? Don't off world the humans. Let them have a beautiful existence on Earth. But off world the heavy industry and slowly let Earth recover as a garden planet.

[Regina Barber]

Today on the show, constructing buildings in space to build a better Earth. From creating microgravity laboratories and harnessing unfiltered solar power to fabricating large human dwellings in space, we get into why yesterday's sci fi could be tomorrow's reality. I'm Regina Barber and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Foreign.

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[Regina Barber]

So Ariel, during your PhD, you designed a tesserae, which is a self assembling building unit you created for living in space. How does this work?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

So if you think about how space structures have been built in the last 20, 30 years, it's typically aluminum that gets pre built and welded on the ground and then it has to be squeezed into a rocket, has to fit inside. What we developed at MIT that we call tesserae are basically like split space Legos that have powerful magnets on their edges. When those Legos, these modular pieces are released in space, they float together. That's because they're in microgravity. They're basically in free fall around a planet. We have videos from inside the International Space Station. We've tested the prototypes twice now. We're about to go back to the ISS in early 2026.

[Regina Barber]

Like smaller versions of them.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Exactly. Prototypes that help us test the algorithm of self assembly, test the energy required to pulse through the magnets in addition to coming together. It's a self correcting system. So the tiles have essentially like AI built into the pieces themselves, into the hardware, and they can decide if they bonded correctly. And we were really inspired by biomimetic systems like how proteins and DNA self assembles in the body and can correct itself.

[Regina Barber]

Oh, wow. This name actually comes from like an art process, right, where like it's mosaics, I think in like in Roman times. Is that where this name came from or is it an acronym?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

It's both. So I went on this amazing trip and we had an incredible opportunity to help restore ancient Roman mosaics. And we learned about tesserae, these tiny little tiles that make up the bigger mosaic. And I came home incredibly inspired to make my work fit in that word. Yes, it's a terribly tortured acronym. Never going to do this again.

[Regina Barber]

No, this is what you do when you're in science.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Exactly. You got to lean into the nerd dub. So it stands for Tessellated electromagnetic Space structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable Adaptive Environments. Tell me that's too much. I know it is.

[Regina Barber]

You got it, you got it? No. So what are the hurdles that still exist to, like, getting this up and running in space?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah. So when you have a modular system like this, you have a lot of seals that have to really work well to be able to, for example, use it as a habitat to keep air pressure inside. So we're designing a system of gasketing or clamps that would actually bring the structure in together and hold air pressure. And then the second of many things we think about is how do we protect the human crew that's inside this big bucky ball. So we're also thinking about the shielding that's required to provide good radiation protection.

[Regina Barber]

Your company has also talked about how space structures can be used for things like agriculture or manufacturing. How would that work?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah. So one of the interesting things about deep space exploration is we're going to have to be able to grow our own agriculture. We have to be able to be self sustaining in a future space station. And this actually does still come back down and benefit life on Earth. In that example of our kind of mission driven work that's focused on Earth first in areas that are torn by natural disasters or really resource constrained environments, there's a lot that we can learn from space agriculture and then be able to take some of those lessons down to Earth. We just did a big space garden project with Daikin, one of the world's largest H vac companies, thinking about how do you keep air humidified? How do you keep it at the right temperature in an extreme environment? How do you get CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen for humans or the opposite for plants? Right. Plants need CO2. So we're working with some exceptional partners to put together this notion of a space garden. How would we actually do plant growth in orbit? And then brought this to the Venice Architecture Biennale earlier this year.

[Regina Barber]

That is amazing. So this kind of work would, I assume, require workers like, do you envision people farming and doing shift work in orbit?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yes, I think there's a mix. It's going to be humans and robots working together. So we call this human robotic interaction, or the symbiosis between humans and robots in the future. We're already thinking about things like AI data centers in space, partly to get the carbon footprint of those installations off of Earth. But also to get really abundant green energy to those installations. And so a company that we spun out of our work at Aurelia, called Rendezvous Robotics, is taking the test array work forward to be able to do things at that scale without humans involved. But on the habitation side, yes, I think we will have humans. I think we're a critical part of exploration, what it means to find new knowledge for the sake of new knowledge and explore this frontier. So I think it'll continue to be a mix of humans and robots.

[Regina Barber]

So would the workers live their lives up there eating, sleeping, and working, or would they be commuting?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I anticipate that the workers are less likely than people think from science fiction to actually live in space. Steady state. Turns out it's quite hard to live in microgravity. Your bones get weaker, your heart gets weaker, your shape of your eyeball changes. And so what really, I think, makes more sense is that we think of these installations in low Earth orbit, for example, close to Earth or between Earth and the Moon, as places where you commute to do your work, to do the really special thing that calls you to orbit. But when you're done with that, if it's two weeks or three months or six months, then you come back down to Earth and you still live your life on Earth. There is, of course, a farther out future where we've actually figured out artificial gravity, which is when you spin a habitat gingerly so you don't make people sick, but you spin it a big enough one at a slow enough rate that you can actually get close to Earth's gravity. And then it's healthier for people to live in orbit for long durations. But in the near term, I think it'll be more like commuting to space than living in space.

[Regina Barber]

So when I think about commuting, commuting now is like not the best for the environment. So what about commuting to space? Is that going to affect our environment as well?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

This is a really important question for the space industry because at this particular moment, there's not a significant carbon footprint from the space industry compared to, say, commercial aviation. But if we succeed in all of these launches, we very well may scale up to the point where it's significant. So there's already some great research into cleaner types of rocket fuel to make sure that the prevalence of launches, if we get a higher frequency of launch cadence off of Earth, that it doesn't contribute to a really serious additional carbon footprint.

[Regina Barber]

So if there are a lot of launches, like people are commuting up into space. How are we going to deal with space junk and debris?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Space debris is one of these really important problems that we're facing in the space industry. It's an early tragedy of the commons from all the prior launches that have gone up. There's a couple different ways to deal with it. One, we have to stem the tide. So we have to have really responsible actors who are no longer contributing to additional debris. The FAA made a ruling that any new objects that are launched to space have to have a provable deep orbit plan. You have to convince the FAA that your object is going to burn up completely on reentry and be incinerated. So it's not going to contribute to space debris. The other project is to remediate and so go and actually clean up the existing debris. And there's some really cool ideas. Think Pac man in space. Basically going through with a net or big magnet with some ability to collect over time enough debris that you have enough mass that you begin to feel the effect of drag in the atmosphere and you'd be pulled in and be able to burn up on reentry. Space is very vast, so even the debris amount that we have now is not hindering us from doing space launches, but we absolutely need to clean it up.

[Regina Barber]

Speaking of environmental issues and space and junk and pollution, you're exploring building solar panels in space, in low earth orbit, like basically where the International Space Station is. How would that work?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

So this is where Rendezvous Robotics comes in again. This is our startup that's focused on how do you self assemble things that aren't habitat related, that are big, flat, massive, and would have a really important near term function like being a solar panel or being a radiator. It would be way too slow and dangerous to ask a human to go out in an EVA suit, which is what we call an extra vehicular activity suit, and go do that by hand, which is how a lot of the International Space Station was built, which is wild. And we also don't want to rely on a robotic arm. Too slow, too much risk that it would bump or with too much momentum.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, it's too fragile.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, exactly, it's too fragile. So we really need all these pieces to be able to come together. Not all at one time, but gradually attaching to each other, build out a big field, you know, the size of maybe several football fields worth of solar panels. We're super excited to be working with companies that are thinking about the future of space space based solar power. Thinking about how do you capture raw unfiltered sunlight above the clouds, way more efficient. Concentrate it and beam it down to Earth. You could have New York City powered at night by a beam from space.

[Regina Barber]

Now that you say it's a beam, I'm less scared because when I saw that in making areas of Earth have light when it is nighttime can be dangerous. Right? Like you could alter seasons, you could mess up ecosystems, could mess up circadian rhythm. But you're talking about an actual beam, which sounds kind of super villainy too. So how are you thinking about some of these issues that might be a problem?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yes, this company Overview Energy has basically figured out a way to do it very safely. So like you said, it's a concentrated beam. So it's not going to light up the city, it's not going to affect animals, it's not going to affect kids, homes, seasons. Yeah, not going to affect seasons. It's essential something that you would beam down onto maybe even existing solar panels. And then they also control the energy of it so that a plane can fly through it.

[Regina Barber]

So it doesn't overload it too.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, exactly. So it doesn't overload it. It is not a concentrated thing that could cause any damage. So it doesn't basically require a air traffic control keep out zone, for example. And this is an incredible innovation that we've known how to do in some way since the 1970s, but it wasn't cheap enough until recently when the cost to get to space have dropped so dramatically to begin to make this a reality.

[Regina Barber]

So how feasible is this? Like if you were. Give me a timeline.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I think inside five years they're going to have power beaming demos from orbit. They just did an airplane based power beaming demo. So they showed that it could do it as they're moving in a plane. So I think within five years they'll have power beaming from space certainly. And 10 year mark, you're thinking about power utilities from space, fundamental green energy and much more abundant. That's a much more profoundly clean way to deliver energy to the global south as they start to industrialize even further rather than needing to rely on fossil fuels or some of the ways in which, you know, other nations came up through industrial energy use. So I think there's a really interesting twin opportunity between Earth and space there to act as ethical space faring and Earth based citizens.

[Regina Barber]

Ariel, thank you so much for talking with us today about building in space.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Regina Barber]

Short wavers. I know every podcast everywhere asks you to follow them and for good reason. For us, as a show on a public media budget. One of the best ways you can help us grow, grow, survive and thrive is to follow us from wherever you're listening. We appreciate you. If you like this episode, check out our Space Camp series listed in the show Notes. This episode was Produced by Burleigh McCoy, edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and fact checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. Beth Donovan is our vice president of podcasting and I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from npr.

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