World's first wooden satellite to test 'wooden material applicability' in space

World’s first “wooden satellite” dubbed as WISA WOODSAT which will launch into the Earth’s orbit by the end of 2021 will test the "applicability of wooden materials in spacecraft structures for the future launches and their exposure to extreme space conditions", the company explained on Tuesday. The nanosatellite, based on the popular CubeSat standard, designed and built-in Finland, will be launched on Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the Mahia Peninsula launch complex in New Zealand, the maker WISA-Birch plywood said in a release on June 15.

The 10x10x10 cm and 2.2 lbs. (1 kilogram) ‘CubeSat’  wooden satellite will carry the European Space Agency payload. ESA is contributing a suite of experimental sensors to the mission as well as helping with pre-flight testing. The wooden satellite is powered by nine small solar cells and is equipped with an amateur radio payload. It will also run an experiment that will test the use of a novel 3D-printed electrically conductive plastic material, which will pave the way for future 3D printing in space. 

“I’ve always enjoyed making model planes, involving a lot of wooden parts. Having worked in the space education field, this got me wondering; why don’t we fly any wooden materials in space?’ Said Makinen. 

“So I had the idea, first of all, to fly a wooden satellite up to the stratosphere, aboard a weather balloon. That happened in 2017, with a wooden version of KitSat. That having gone well, we decided to upgrade it and actually go into orbit. From there the project just snowballed: we found commercial backing, and secured a berth on an Electron launcher from Rocket Lab in New Zealand.”

[Credit: KitKat]

The mission, according to ESA, was initiated by Jari Makinen, a Finnish writer, and broadcaster and the company that he co-founded called Arctic Astronautics that manufactures fully functional replicas of orbit-ready CubeSats for education, training, and hobby purposes.

ESA's Materials' Physics and Chemistry section head, Riccardo Rampini, informed that the pressure sensor will allow the agency to identify the local pressure in onboard cavities in the hours and days after launch into orbit. this is an important factor for the turn-on of high power systems and radio-frequency antennas because small amounts of molecules in the cavity can potentially cause the satellite great harm.

The base material for the plywood is birch, as the ordinary plywood is too humid for space, explained Woodsat chief engineer Samuli Nymanm, also the Arctic Astronautics co-founder in a statement. He added that Aluminum oxide, a chemical compound that encapsulates electronics, is going to prevent the satellite's wood from releasing any gas in the space environment which will also protect it from corrosive atomic oxygen found on the Earth. 

'Successful' stratospheric test flight

A test model of the WISA Woodsat made a successful stratospheric test flight on Saturday 12 June 2021. The flight took off at 13:25 EEST and lasted for 2 hours and 54 minutes and made its maximum altitude of 31.2 km over the city of Mäntsälä, where the balloon carrying the set-up exploded as planned. After that, the satellite model and a styrofoam float (for possible landing to a lake or river) started its descent under a parachute and it landed safely into a forest, the company