JAPAN: The world’s first wooden satellite was sent to space on Tuesday, thanks to Japan.
Japanese scientists from the University of Kyoto built the satellite to test the use of timber in the moon and Mars exploration.
According to a CNN report, the satellite, called LignoSat, was flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission and later released into orbit 400 km above Earth.
Scientists in Japan are set to test the world’s first wooden satellite, LignoSat, developed by a team from Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, and will be launched on Nov. 5′ pic.twitter.com/Go6sSnPXP0
— Reuters Science News (@ReutersScience) November 1, 2024
Lignosat is Latin for wood. Takao Doi, an astronaut who studies human space activities at Kyoto University, said:
“With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever.”
Doi’s research team has a 50-year plan to plant trees and build timber houses on the moon and Mars, and this was the first step towards proving that wood is a space-worthy material.
Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata said, “Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood.
A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.” Murata added that wood would hold up better in space than on Earth because water and oxygen would not make it rot.
“Metal satellites might be banned in the future. If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk’s SpaceX,” said Doi.
According to scientists and researchers working on the project, the best material for LignoSat is actually from the honoki tree, a magnolia tree native to Japan.
LignoSat will be in orbit for six months with components measuring how wood is tolerated in space.
Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research Institute manager Kenji Kariya said that the satellite would also be able to gauge wood’s ability to reduce the impact of space radiation on semiconductors, which would be helpful for applications such as data center construction.
“It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge technology as civilization heads to the moon and Mars. Expansion to space could invigorate the timber industry,” said Kariya.