Regina G. Barber

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.

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.

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?

Like smaller versions of them.

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?

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

You got it.