The European Space Agency (ESA) has planned to put the world’s first wooden satellite into Earth orbit. His name, WISA Woodsat.
The mission of the wood satellite is to test the applicability of materials such as plywood in spacecraft structures and expose them to extreme space conditions, such as heat, cold, vacuum and radiation, for an extended period of time.
The WISA Woodsat will launch into space in late 2021 (probably November) with a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula launch complex.
WISA Woodsat is a 10x10x10 cm “CubeSat” , a type of nanosatellite built from standardized boxes, but with surface panels made of plywood, specifically birch. The main difference is that ordinary plywood is too wet for space uses, so they put the wood in a thermal vacuum chamber to dry it. The only non-wood external parts are the aluminum corner rails used for deployment in space plus a metal pole for taking selfies. They have also added a very thin layer of aluminum oxide to minimize steam from the wood and protect it from the erosive effects of atomic oxygen.
After launch, it will enter a polar orbit around Earth. If wood technology works well, it could introduce an inexpensive alternative to the satellite market.
“The good thing about this is that we ended up coming up with a low-cost device that could find all kinds of additional uses, both in orbit and on the ground in test environments,” said Bruno Bras, ESA’s materials engineer.
