ANTARIKSA — NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plan to launch the world’s first wooden satellite into space. The goal is to create an environmentally friendly space flight roadmap.
They have created LignoSat, a coffee cup-sized satellite made of magnolia wood. It will be launched into Earth orbit in the summer of 2024.
I don’t know who came up with the wooden satellite idea, but it makes sense. Wood will not burn or rot in the lifeless vacuum of space. Instead, the wood will burn into fine ash when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere and produces a very useful material. They could be biodegradable for future satellites.
After successfully testing their wood samples on the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year, scientists believe the test satellite is fit for launch next year. Previously, scientists sent three wood samples to the ISS for testing, namely magnolia, cherry, birch.
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All three are stored in modules exposed to outer space conditions. The researchers then chose magnolia because of its strength and nature which is not easy to manufacture.
For your information, more than 9,300 tons of space objects are currently orbiting Earth. Including space debris such as satellites that are no longer operational and chunks of used rockets.
The materials these objects are made from, such as lightweight titanium and aluminum, are shiny metals that increase the brightness of the night sky. They contribute 10 percent of the shine in our planet’s sky, creating light pollution. As a result, space phenomena that need to be known will be much more difficult to detect.
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Metal spacecraft are also expensive and pose a threat to the space station, other spacecraft, and humans on Earth. If they are large, they probably won’t burn up completely in the atmosphere so they can fall freely to any location in the world.
“In theory, wooden satellites like LignoSat should be less harmful than space debris,” the researchers wrote. Source: Live Science
2023-11-15 05:01:00
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