Japanese Researchers Launch World's First Wooden Satellite

Japanese researchers effectively launched the first wooden satellite into space on Tuesday, as an initial test for using timber in missions to the moon and Mars. LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry, will be sent to the ISS via a SpaceX mission and released into an orbit around 400km from our planet.

Named small LignoSat after the Latin word for "wood" to demonstrate how renewable materials can be used in space exploration as people contemplate living in space.

"With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever," said Takao Doi, an astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle and studies human space activities at Kyoto University.

Doi and his team developed a plan spanning 50 years to plant trees and build wooden houses on the moon and Mars, with the goal of making a wooden satellite approved by NASA to prove wood's potential as a space material.

"Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," said Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata. "A wooden satellite should be feasible, too."

Murata said that wood lasts longer in space than on Earth because there is no water or oxygen to make it decay or ignite. Researchers say that the environmental impact is decreased by a wooden satellite when it reaches the end of its life.