LignoSat: First wood-panelled satellite launched into space

Dr Simeon Barber, a space research scientist at the Open University in the UK, said: “We have to be clear that this is not a satellite completely made of wood… but the basic premise behind the idea is really interesting.

“From a sustainability point of view, wood is a material that can be grown and is therefore renewable,” he told the BBC.

“The idea that you might be able to grow wood on another planet to help you explore space or make shelters – explorers have always used wood to make shelters when they’ve gone to a new land.”

Dr Barber said it wasn’t the first time that wood had been used on spacecraft.

“We use wood – cork – on the re-entry, outer shell of vessels of spacecraft to help them survive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.”

Russian and Soviet lunar landers used cork to help the rover have grip as it was descending to the surface, he added.

“There’s nothing wrong with using wood in space – it’s using the right material for the right task.”

He pointed out that wood has properties that are hard to control.

“So from an engineering point of view it’s quite a difficult material to work with… I think wood’s always going to have a problem to make critical structures like parts of spacecraft where you need to predict how strong it’s going to be.”

The researchers at Kyoto University hope using wood in making spacecraft could also be much less polluting than metal ones when they burn-up on re-entry at the end of their life.