Japanese Researchers Design Wooden Satellite to Withstand Space Environment

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — A research team wants to put a wooden satellite into orbit. Results from recent tests on the International Space Station (ISS), which exposed different woods to a vacuum, have been confirmed by a team of project researchers at Kyoto University, Japan.

Reported from SpaceFriday (2/6/2023), findings show that wood is very tough, even in the space environment.

“Although the extreme space environment involved significant temperature changes and 10 months of exposure to intense cosmic rays and harmful solar particles, tests confirmed no decomposition or deformation, such as cracks, warping, peeling, or surface damage,” said the press release. Kyoto University recently.

The experiment serves as a preliminary investigation for the Kyoto University-led international LignoSat partnership, which is designing a wooden satellite slated to be jointly launched by the Japanese space agency (JAXA) and NASA sometime next year.

The LignoSat Space Wood Project started in April 2020, as a collaboration between Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry. Head of Space Wood Research Effort Koji Murata said, in a 2021 press release, that wood’s ability to withstand simulated low-Earth orbit—or LEO— conditions surprised them.

“We wanted to see if we could accurately estimate the effect LEO’s harsh environment would have on organic matter,” says Koji Murata.

To test the effect, a small panel containing three different samples of wood was launched to the ISS for storage at the station’s Japanese Experimental Kibo Module, where it was exposed to space for 10 months in 2022. The wood panel was retrieved by JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata and returned to Earth aboard SpaceX’s CRS-26 cargo spacecraft in January 2023, and project scientists hailed its success.

Of the woods tested, the LignoSat team chose to continue with the project using wood from the Magnolia tree. This is due to “relatively high workability, dimensional stability and overall strength,” according to the release.

If in fact wood turns out to be a really viable alternative for satellite manufacturing, it does have some potential benefits over the common metal alloys used in construction today. First, it’s more environmentally friendly, overall. It’s easier, cheaper, and cleaner to manufacture, and much easier to dispose of when it comes to satellite end-of-life.

While in deorbit, a satellite and its constituent components usually burn up mostly, if not completely, in Earth’s atmosphere. The unburned parts are strategically deorbited for disbursement into remote parts of the ocean.

Satellites of wood would definitely burn up during their re-entry, and if the few small pieces of wood that did manage to stay intact during the process, they would easily rot wherever they landed on Earth.