This new spaceflight tech has a very retro feel.
The world's first wooden satellite, a tiny Japanese spacecraft called LignoSat, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Nov. 5) aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.
LignoSat measures just 4 inches (10 centimeters) on each side, but it could end up having a big impact on spaceflight and exploration down the road.
"While some of you might think that wood in space seems a little counterintuitive, researchers hope this investigation demonstrates that a wooden satellite can be more sustainable and less polluting for the environment than conventional satellites," Meghan Everett, the deputy chief scientist for NASA's International Space Station program, said in a press briefing on Monday (Nov. 4), a few hours before the Dragon capsule lifted off.
Conventional satellites are made primarily of aluminum. When they burn up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of their lives, they generate aluminum oxides, which can alter the planet's thermal balance and damage its protective ozone layer.
Related: Pollution from rocket launches and burning satellites could cause the next environmental emergency
These impacts are becoming more of a concern as the orbital population grows, thanks to the rise of megaconstellations like SpaceX's ever-growing Starlink broadband network, which currently consists of about 6,500 active satellites.
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Wooden satellites like LignoSat — which substitutes magnolia wood for aluminum — could be part of the solution going forward; they wouldn't pump such damaging pollutants into the atmosphere when they fell back to Earth, mission team members have said.
"Metal satellites might be banned in the future," retired Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, an aerospace engineer who's now a professor at Kyoto University, told Reuters. "If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk's SpaceX."
LignoSat, which was developed by researchers at Kyoto University and the Tokyo-based logging company Sumitomo Forestry, will soon get a chance to prove itself.
About a month from now, the cubesat will be deployed into orbit from the ISS' Kibo module. If all goes according to plan, its onboard electronics will record and beam home key health data for the next six months.
"Student researchers will measure the temperature and strain of the wooden structure and see how it might change in the vacuum environment of space, and the atomic oxygen and radiation conditions as well," Everett said.
LignoSat team members also say a successful test could have implications far beyond Earth orbit.
"It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge technology as civilization heads to the moon and Mars," Kenji Kariya, a manager at the Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research Institute, told Reuters. "Expansion to space could invigorate the timber industry."
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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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ChrisA I don't think this is the fist use of wood in space. In the 1970s and 1980s there were Chinese satellites that use an oak heat shield. The wood would burn and fall away as the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere.Reply
Google will find them, one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanhui_Shi_Weixing
My question is what fraction of the satellite's mass is replaced with wood. Not "what fraction of this spacecraft is made of wood, but how much aluminum is lost and replaced with wood.
Are the fuel tanks made of wood? There are obviously many parts that can not be made with wood.
Finally, this may work out well because, like the Chinese satellites possibly the wood acts as a heat shield and allows the satellite to mostly service reentry and the internal parts do not completely disintegrate and fall into the ocean. Falling into the ocean is likely better than vaporizing in the air. -
bolide This is an excellent idea. Great strength-to-weight, lower cost, less pollution.Reply
We tend to become so enamored of our latest technology that we don't see its disadvantages, in the glare of its novel capacities. But sometimes we can step back and see that the older tech works just as well, without the new problems. -
Classical Motion Not only that, if it ever got out of our system and was found, no one would have a clue as to what the material was. An unknown strange non metal material.Reply
The Neighbors might come from miles around to take a look at it. -
The True Nolan
The Ranger 4 spacecraft became the first US craft to impact on another celestial body, the Moon, on April 26, 1962, and it was made partly of balsa wood. Just before impact, the main spacecraft released a small spherical lander containing a seismograph. Technology at the time was not good enough to perform a soft landing, but the package had a small rocket engine to decelerate it to (hopefully!) about 60 MPH. The seismometer itself was contained in a sphere which was surrounded by an outer shell of balsa wood. Between the two parts was a liquid. The plan was to impact the Moon slow enough to survive, with the balsa absorbing most of the impact. After the sphere stopped rolling, the bottom-heavy seismograph would rotate in the liquid to become upright. A little bullet (I think it might have been a regular .22 caliber) would automatically fire through the wood, allowing the liquid to drain out and thus leaving an upright seismometer able to sense lunar vibrations. While the package did successfully impact, it did so just beyond the limb of the visible lunar surface preventing any data reception.ChrisA said:I don't think this is the fist use of wood in space. In the 1970s and 1980s there were Chinese satellites that use an oak heat shield. The wood would burn and fall away as the spacecraft reentered the atmosphere.
Google will find them, one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanhui_Shi_Weixing
My question is what fraction of the satellite's mass is replaced with wood. Not "what fraction of this spacecraft is made of wood, but how much aluminum is lost and replaced with wood.
Are the fuel tanks made of wood? There are obviously many parts that can not be made with wood.
Finally, this may work out well because, like the Chinese satellites possibly the wood acts as a heat shield and allows the satellite to mostly service reentry and the internal parts do not completely disintegrate and fall into the ocean. Falling into the ocean is likely better than vaporizing in the air. -
billslugg I remember the Ranger images where the last one just before impact was only partially sent, half the picture was noise.Reply