Did you know that we had satellites powered by solar panels way back in 1958? I didn't. But Vanguard I, the second satellite the U.S. ever launched, featured six solar cells powering a mercury battery. The solar-powered design was the result of work by Dr. Hans Ziegler, a German-American scientist who left Germany to work for the U.S. government after World War II. In the 1970s, Japanese astrophysicist Dr. Koryo Miura was studying the problem of how to get larger solar panels into orbit. He and a colleague, Masamori Sakamaki, started experimenting with origami. They eventually developed the Miura fold, which creases the paper into parallelogram-shaped sections: It took 20 years, but in 1995 JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) launched the first satellite to feature a Miura-folded solar array. By the 2000s, NASA and their European counterpart, ESA, began studying Miura folds for potential future applications.The Miura fold was also applied to maps in Japan, by a company called ZeroOne, back in the mid-'90s. And now VTT, a technical research center in Finland, has applied the Miura fold to another humble application: Packaging. By using cardboard and going extreme with the parallelogram angles, VTT researchers have developed a protective packaging that they reckon can replace EPS foam. They call the product FOLD. It can be made from wood waste products and is itself recyclable, unlike EPS. As a bonus, package designers will probably prefer FOLD to EPS, as FOLD is a damn sight better looking. "in applications for luxury items, such as in the cosmetics industry," the researchers write, "the aesthetics of the packaging are an important part of the customer experience. FOLD offers consumers a more premium unboxing experience that is also more environmentally conscious compared to traditionally used solutions like plastic bubble wrap and expanded polystyrene." There's still some more development to be done. Estimates are that fold will be on the market in "3-5 years."