by This new spaceflight technology has a very retro feel.
The world’s first wooden satellite, a small Japanese spacecraft called Lignozaarrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Nov. 5) aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.
LignoSat measures just 10 centimeters on each side, but could ultimately have a major impact on spaceflight and road exploration.
“While some of you may think that putting wood in space seems a bit counterintuitive, researchers hope this study shows that a wooden satellite could be more sustainable and less polluting to the environment than conventional satellites,” said Meghan Everett, deputy chief scientist of NASA’s International Space Station program, said in a press conference on Monday (Nov. 4), a few hours before the Dragon capsule took off.
Conventional satellites are mainly made of aluminum. When they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere at the end of their lives, they generate aluminum oxides, which can alter the planet’s thermal balance and damage the protective ozone layer.
Related: Pollution from rocket launches and burning satellites could cause the next ecological emergency
These consequences are becoming increasingly worrisome as the orbital population grows, thanks to the rise of mega-constellations such as SpaceX’s ever-expanding Starlink broadband network, which currently consists of approximately 6,500 active satellites.
Wooden satellites such as LignoSat – which replaces aluminum with magnolia wood – could be part of the solution in the future; they would not pump such harmful pollutants into the atmosphere if they fell back to Earth, mission team members say.
“Metal satellites may be banned in the future,” retired Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, an aerospace engineer who is now a professor at Kyoto University, told Reuters. “If we can prove that our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
LignoSat, developed by researchers from Kyoto University and Tokyo-based logging company Sumitomo Forestry, will soon get a chance to prove itself.
In about a month, the cubesat will be launched into orbit from the ISS’s Kibo module. If all goes according to plan, the onboard electronics will record and send home important health data over the next six months.
“Student researchers will measure the temperature and stress of the wooden structure and see how it can change in the vacuum environment of space, as well as atomic oxygen and radiation conditions,” Everett said.
LignoSat team members also say a successful test could have consequences far beyond Earth orbit.
“It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge technology as civilization moves to the moon and Mars,” Kenji Kariya, manager at the Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research Institute, told Reuters. “Expansion into space could boost the timber industry.”
