The world’s first wooden satellite has just been launched into space in a preliminary experiment aimed at growing plants, building wooden houses on the Moon, and utilizing wood in space exploration.
The wooden satellite was launched into space on November 5 as part of preliminary tests for using wood in exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Developed in Japan by Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry, LignoSat will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX flight, according to Reuters.
Mr. Takao Doi holding a model of the LignoSat satellite in his laboratory at Kyoto University. (PHOTO: REUTERS).
Subsequently, the satellite will be released into an orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometers above the Earth.
Named after the Latin word for wood, LignoSat is the size of a hand and aims to demonstrate the potential for using renewable materials in space.
“With wood, a material we can produce ourselves, we will be able to build homes, live, and work in space indefinitely,” said Mr. Takao Doi, an astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle and studies human space activities at Kyoto University.
With a 50-year plan for growing trees and building wooden houses on the Moon and Mars, Doi’s team decided to develop a NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove that wood is a viable space material.
“Aircraft from the early 1900s were made of wood. A wooden satellite could also be feasible,” said Professor Koji Murata, a forestry scientist at Kyoto University.
“Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there is no water or oxygen that can cause it to rot or burn,” Murata added. Researchers indicate that a wooden satellite would also minimize environmental impact at the end of its lifecycle.
Inactive satellites must return to the atmosphere to avoid becoming space debris. Conventional metal satellites produce aluminum oxide particles during re-entry, but wooden satellites would simply burn up and create less pollution, according to Doi.
“Metal satellites may be banned in the future. If we can prove that our first wooden satellite works, we want to introduce it to Elon Musk’s SpaceX,” he added.
Once deployed, LignoSat will orbit for 6 months, with electronic components measuring the endurance of wood in the harsh conditions of space, where temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it rotates from the dark to sunlight.
