World’s First Wooden Satellite Launches, Heralds Greener Solution to Space Junk
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Now, imagine a wooden satellite cutting its way through the extreme vacuum of space. Improbable, but Japanese engineers have built just that—a wooden satellite named LignoSat, launching in the summer of 2025. This bold experiment is aimed at proving that lowly lumber could well be the key to unlocking one of our biggest cosmic pains: space debris.
A Sustainable Starship
Space may sound like a very inhospitable place for anything organic, but the creators of LignoSat chose magnolia wood for a reason. There‘s no oxygen in the void to ignite the wood, there’s no moisture to make it rot, and there are no microbes around to break it down. The main challenge? The satellite needs to withstand its fiery re-entry into Earth‘s atmosphere–something that‘s part of the plan.
When satellites reenter the atmosphere, they burn up and generate microscopic alumina particles,“ said Japanese astronaut and Kyoto University aerospace engineer Takao Doi. “Those particles can hang around in the upper atmosphere for years and may one day start to poison the environment.”
Testing the Limits of Timber
Starting with an intensive, year-long test of the wood’s resilience to extreme conditions on the ISS from Kyoto University in collaboration with Sumitomo Forestry, a company with over 400 years of experience in woodworking, the journey began. The surprising results that came from this will show durability.
It also had to survive temperature conditions that ranged from minus 100 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius, during which it contracted and expanded accordingly. “This is tough on a material, and all of us on the team were amazed that the wood was able to withstand these conditions,” said Koji Murata, head of the project. One key mission of LignoSat will be to monitor how the wooden structure deforms in space. “Wood is stable in one direction but may crack or change shape in another,” Murata said.
A Small Satellite, Big Ambitions
Before you start envisioning wooden space stations, LignoSat is no giant-pretty much the size of a big coffee mug. It is designed to last for a six-month orbital journey before gracefully burning up during re-entry, with no harmful residue left behind.
If things go well, LignoSat is opening a door to space-grade lumber as a material to fabricate satellites with. Assuming 2,000 launches per year in the near future, the switch to biodegradable materials may be a way to reduce the environmental impact of space exploration.
A Greener Future for Space Exploration
The growing number of countries in the race is leaving a trail of debris behind the aluminum satellites that could nullify the progress so far made in healing the ozone layer. Now, there is hope: with LignoSat comes an auspicious alternative, a manner of launching satellites that would be hardy and sustainable and leave nothing behind but a cleaner atmosphere.
With its upcoming launch, LignoSat may just prove that sometimes the best solutions are simple-straight from the forest to the final frontier.
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