Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there’s no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it, Murata added.
A wooden satellite also minimises the environmental impact at the end of its life, the researchers say.
Decommissioned satellites must re-enter the atmosphere to avoid becoming space debris. Conventional metal satellites create aluminium oxide particles during re-entry, but wooden ones would just burn up with less pollution, Doi said.
“Metal satellites might be banned in the future,” Doi said. “If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION
The researchers found that honoki, a kind of magnolia tree native in Japan and traditionally used for sword sheaths, is most suited for spacecraft, after a 10-month experiment aboard the International Space Station.
LignoSat is made of honoki, using a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue.
Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in orbit for six months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how wood endures the extreme environment of space, where temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.
LignoSat will also gauge wood’s ability to reduce the impact of space radiation on semiconductors, making it useful for applications such as data centre construction, said Kenji Kariya, a manager at Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research Institute.
“It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge technology as civilisation heads to the moon and Mars,” he said. “Expansion to space could invigorate the timber industry.”
