The World’s First Wooden Satellite Is Tiny, Ingenious, and About to Head to Space

• All the nearly 10,000 satellites in Earth’s orbit will one day crash through the atmosphere, ending its life in an explosive fireball.
• Unfortunately, that fireball can leave behind metal particles and other substances that can be damaging to the Earth’s atmosphere.
• So after four years of growing, designing, and building, the University of Kyoto is finally ready to send the world’s first wooden satellite to space.

Orbital satellites make our modern lives possible, but they come with some significant downsides. They’re expensive, vulnerable to the ever-increasing threat of space weapons, and maybe most importantly, they’re junking up our little corner of the galaxy. When satellites re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at the end of their lives, they leave behind metal particles in Earth’s orbit and atmosphere and studies suggest that aluminum introduced during the burning fireball of reentry could also contribute to the depletion of the ozone.

So back in 2020, engineers from Kyoto University, in partnership with the logging company Sumitomo Forestry, had an idea — why not make satellites out of wood?

Four years later, that satellite is officially ready for launch, according to AFP, which says the first-of-its-kind wood spacecraft will travel aboard a SpaceX rocket headed for the International Space Station (ISS) sometime this September. Unlike the hulking behemoths that SpaceX usually hauls aloft, this satellite—named LignoSat—is only a 4-inch cube, crafted from magnolia wood that the satellite’s creators employed a traditional Japanese woodworking technique to avoid the need of using any screws or glue.