Regina G. Barber

Please come back next year.

It's been a pleasure.

I'd love to talk about it with you again in 2027.

We'll link to the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2026 by MIT Technology Review in our show notes.

If you liked this episode, check out our episode on last year's top 10 technologies to look for, or our episode on building structures in space.

We'll link to them in our show notes.

I'm 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 Ekblag got her Ph.D.

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

Step two, Ariel founded the company Aurelia with two other women, Danielle DeLotte 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.

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.

I love Earth.

Today on the show, constructing buildings in space to build a better Earth.