It was launched into space last Tuesday LignoSatthe first satellite in the world made of wood, the result of the collaboration between Kyoto University and the Japanese forestry company Sumitomo Forestry. This innovative Japanese project, which attracted considerable interest, was transported aboard a mission of the US company SpaceX headed to the International Space Station (ISS). Once on the ISS, the satellite will be released into orbit approximately 400 kilometers above Earth, where it will remain for a period of six months.
Koji Murata, professor of forestry at Kyoto University and one of the project leaders, stressed that using wood as a space material is not a absolute novelty, remembering that airplanes of the early twentieth century were also built with this material. “A wooden satellite should be just as feasible, and in a space environment it is also more resistant than Earth, since there is no water or oxygen in space that could cause it to rot or catch fire,” Murata explained.
Kenji Kariya, director of the Tsukuba Research Institute di Sumitomo Forestryadded that LignoSat will also measure wood’s ability to shield semiconductors from space radiation, an ability that could prove invaluable for future developments, such as using wood in the construction of orbiting data centers.
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