First wooden satellite, developed in Japan, deploys to space

Story and Photos by REUTERS

The world’s first wooden satellite, built by Japanese researchers, was launched into space in November 2024 to test using timber in lunar and Mars exploration.

LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, was flown to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX mission and released into orbit about 400 kilometers above Earth.

Named after the Latin word for “wood,” the palm-size LignoSat is tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of a renewable resource.

“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, a former astronaut who 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 developed a NASA-certified satellite to prove 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 to rot or inflame it, Murata said. A wooden satellite also will have minimal environmental impact at the end of its life, the researchers say.

Decommissioned satellites must reenter the atmosphere to avoid becoming space debris. Conventional metal satellites create aluminum oxide particles during reentry, but wooden ones would burn up, producing less pollution, Doi said.

In a previous International Space Station experiment, researchers determined that honoki, a type of magnolia tree native to Japan and traditionally used for sword sheaths, is well suited for spacecraft.

Researchers made LignoSat with honoki and a traditional Japanese crafts technique that doesn’t require screws or glue.

LignoSat will stay in orbit for six months. Electronic components onboard are measuring how wood endures the extreme space environment, where temperatures fluctuate from minus 100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes during orbit. 

LignoSat will also gauge wood’s ability to mitigate space radiation on semiconductors, which could make it useful for applications such as data center construction, said Kenji Kariya, a manager at Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research Institute.

“It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge technology as civilization heads to the moon and Mars,” he said. “Expansion to space could invigorate the timber industry.”