Autonomous triangular modules could build tomorrow's mega-observatories

Private companies are getting better at launching more mass into space with larger rockets. But there is still a major constraint on the size of objects we can get into orbit-fairing size. This places physical constraints on the overall shape of what we can launch and severely limits the sizes of, say, a communications array or a power satellite. But a new paper from researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Beijing Institute of Technology offers a solution-a self...