Japan-made world's first wooden satellite blasts off into space

The world's first wooden satellite, built by Japanese researchers, was launched into space on Tuesday, in an early test of using timber in lunar and Mars exploration.

LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission, and later released into orbit about 400 kilometres above the Earth.

Named after the Latin word for "wood", the palm-sized LignoSat is tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of the renewable material as humans explore 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.

With a 50-year plan of planting trees and building timber houses on the moon and Mars, Doi's team decided to develop a wooden satellite — using wood certified by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) — to prove that wood is a space-grade material.

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

Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it, Murata added.

A wooden satellite also minimises the environmental impact at the end of its life, the researchers say.

Decommissioned satellites must re-enter the atmosphere to avoid becoming space debris. Conventional metal satellites create aluminium oxide particles during re-entry, but wooden ones would just burn up with less pollution, Doi said.

"Metal satellites might be banned in the future," Doi said. "If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to pitch it to Elon Musk's SpaceX."