The first wooden satellite was launched by Japan on Tuesday with the goal of testing the effectiveness of wood in space.
Japanese researchers from Kyoto University and the homebuilding company Sumitomo Forestry built the wooden satellite LignoSat. On a SpaceX mission, the spacecraft will fly the satellite to the International Space Station (ISS) and leave it in orbit 250 miles above the atmosphere.
Japan’s Wooden Satellite
Japan’s wooden satellite is an engineering marvel. It carries electronics into space while simultaneously being the size of a human palm. The satellite’s mission is to prove that a renewable resource such as wood can be used for space missions.
“With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,” said Takao Doi, an astronaut who studies human space activities at Kyoto University.
The idea originated from Takao Doi’s question in 2017: Can humanity build a society in space with trees as a renewable building resource?
“We were trying to think about how to build something on the moon with wood,” said Koji Murata, a professor of forest and biomaterials science at Kyoto University who worked on the wooden satellite.
The researchers at Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry tested three different kinds of wood against extremely high temperatures and radiation: birch, cherry, and magnolia.
“Tests confirmed no decomposition or deformations, such as cracking, warping, peeling or surface damage,” said the team in a paper published in January.
All the woods performed well in testing, but the team chose magnolia because of its lightweight properties and resistance to cracking. The wooden satellite was made using a Japanese style of construction called sashimoto, which uses specially designed joints to attach without the use of screws or glue.
“Nobody had ever thought about using wood for rocket science before,” said Murata. “Many engineers thought wood was old technology and couldn’t be applied to cutting-edge technology.”
In fact, Doi and Murata considered how planes were made of wood less than 100 years ago and what that could mean for the final frontier.
“Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” said Murata. “A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.”
Naturally, the team found sending a wooden satellite into space difficult. There were and still are many unknowns, and the satellite needed to be approved by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA.
“There was a lot of debate because this material had never been used before,” said Murata.
Once in orbit, LignoSat will be tested over six months before the wood burns up into the void of space. The team hopes to learn how the satellite’s structure reacts to being in space and how it will preserve its structure and cargo. When the wood does burn up, it will leave almost nothing behind but carbon dioxide, which the team is excited about from an environmental standpoint.
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