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 km above the Earth.
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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 a 50-year plan of planting trees and building timber houses on the moon and Mars, Doi's team decided to develop a NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove wood is a space-grade material.
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The researchers found that honoki, a kind of magnolia tree native in Japan and traditionally used for sword sheaths, is most suited for spacecraft, after a 10-month experiment aboard the International Space Station.
Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in the orbit for six months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how wood endures the extreme environment of space, where temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.