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The environmentally friendly LignaSat probe – set to orbit this summer – has been created to combat harmful aluminium particles
Japanese scientists have created one of the world’s most unusual spacecraft – a tiny satellite that is made of timber.
The LignoSat probe has been built of magnolia wood, which, in experiments carried out on the International Space Station (ISS), was found to be particularly stable and resistant to cracking. Now plans are being finalised for it to be launched on a US rocket this summer.
The timber satellite has been built by researchers at Kyoto University and the logging company Sumitomo Forestry in order to test the idea of using biodegradable materials such as wood to see if they can act as environmentally friendly alternatives to the metals from which all satellites are currently constructed.
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God I can just see the team of little old Craftsmen widdling away at it for months forming all the toolless joints with sub-millimeter accuracy
People forget for a long time japan built houses without nails or machinery.
Still do.
They don’t last very long though, they are not particularly energy efficient, and they are single story.
It’s not like they have a superior manufacturing technique.
I would have thought that space debris is deadly no matter if it’s made of wood or metal. If something comes at you at a few kilometers a second, it doesn’t really matter what material it is.
The goal isn’t preventing the whole “lots of tiny pieces moving around could collide with you” issue.
The article mentions that aluminium fragments from space debris, upon reentry, end up damaging the ozone layer. The wooden ones do not.
But wouldn’t the wooden one catch fire and unlike aluminium it won’t just stop burning after it enters the atmosphere would it ?
EDIT :Oh i just got it its a satelite they don’t have to bring it back i think
Yes, on re-entry. But the idea is probably that it’s less environmentally damaging than its metal counterparts burning up on re-entry.
I don’t think there’s much that stops burning on re-entry.
It would mostly disperse into ash on re-entry, which has a low terminal velocity.
Would wood splintering cause more small projectiles than if it were made of contemporary materials? Maybe the strength of the projectiles being less than metal might help if it were to hit a space station, but an astronaut on a space walk would have a different story.
If you read the article, it’s because the tiny particles of carbon from the wood are less damaging for the environment then filling the upper atmosphere with aluminum particles when they burn up upon reentry.
LignaSat.
LigmaWhat?
First thought as well 😂
Lignocellulose
They were half a letter off. We were so close to perfection
Outer Wilds Ventures approves of this announcement.
Oh, so steampunk evolves in outer space… That kinda makes more sense
If we can choose the materials of our space transport then I want gingerbread and marshmallows.
of course they launch an origami satellite, the brilliant bastards
Wood is not biodegradable in space. What are they on about? A wooden satellite would not be environmentally friendly debris. It would just be wooden debris
It’s for reentry. Normal satellite create alumina particles.
All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.
Satellites all eventually come back down though. I think they’re hoping for satellites that when they come down and burn up, less expensive and wasteful materials are lost.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just implement some kind of recycling of old satellites rather than letting them burn up at all. Making them out of wood doesn’t seem like a good solution.
In the long term, if we become a proper space faring civilization, yeah we’ll want to recapture satellites at the end of their life span rather than de-orbiting them. Not only do you save them from burning up but you get to reuse the mass that you already spent a bunch of energy getting up there. However, at this stage i don’t think we really have the facilities up there to deal with that.
I’m kind of baffled you wouldn’t read the Article and instead jump to conclusions and assume that some of the smartest people on the Planet would overlook such a huge flaw.
I suppose it’s got a lower carbon emission than steel or aluminum even after you account for it burning up on de-orbit, considering the fuel cost for metal refining.
Just like 90% of politics, all posturing with no substance but people are stupid enough to on average buy it.
Quoting the article.
All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.
Yes, political theater. The damage such a geologically small amount of aluminum that it does not amount to the prevention of that much damage as compared to the bodies of every other aluminum aircraft, decommissioned station and satellite that touches air.
It’s a nice thought, but a drop in the bucket. It’s got spirit and a touch of humanity in the honoring of the Japanese culture’s world renown woodworking traditions, but it is foolish to pretend it is saving an ozone layer that has already been saved.
doesn’t read the article, jumps to conclusions, thinks some of the smartest people in the world would make such mistakes. congrats, sir.
This doesn’t seem to be space junk type pollution which is what space pollution is usually talking about. I guess this would be too minimize upper atmosphere metallic particles over the ocean? I haven’t heard of that being an issue, but maybe if there were many times more satellites than there are today it would become an issue?
It’s for reentry. They burn without leaving alumina particles.
All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.
Yeah, but those reentry particles are over the middle of the ocean, and the amount currently is absolutely tiny compared to things like meteorites. I’ll look in the article, but how do they anticipate high altitude metallic particles effecting the environment?
Edit: I can’t find the research paper they were referencing that aluminum particles deplete the ozone layer. It had a redirect link, but my browser couldn’t open it. starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
E2: looks like it might be this paper? https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313374120
We have not identified any definite implications of the presence of these metals in stratospheric sulfuric acid particles, but there are a number of possible effects. One potential effect would be if aluminum and novel elements affect the nucleation of ice or nitric acid trihydrate (NAT). Novel ice nuclei can have a large effect even at low concentrations because polar stratospheric clouds nucleate on a small fraction of the particles (19). Analogues of meteoric inclusions in sulfuric acid have been shown to be ice nuclei (20, 21). Metal cations can also induce efflorescence in aerosol particles (22). The results in this paper prompted us to reanalyze some of our own older mass spectra. We have identified spacecraft reentry particles in ice residuals from high-altitude cirrus sampled in 2002, although not at a notably different frequency than meteoric elements. There is also a possible impact on the size distribution of the stratospheric aerosol layer. Although the spacecraft reentry metals are mostly found in particles with meteoric material, that does not necessarily mean that the number of particles is constant. Larger particles coagulate less rapidly than smaller particles, so adding anthropogenic material to meteoric smoke can increase the number of particles. If so, the sulfuric acid would be distributed into more numerous but smaller particles with different light scattering and radiative forcing. With a great variety of metals present, novel stratospheric chemistry or unusual optical properties are possible. The metal concentrations are low enough that there would need to be a catalytic cycle for a significant effect on chlorine partitioning in the stratosphere. Copper is a transition metal for which the spacecraft reentry flux already exceeds the input from meteoroids (13) and will continue to increase. Until the perturbations caused by such aerosols are better understood, they represent a growing uncertainty for the stratospheric aerosol layer. These mixed meteoritic and spacecraft reentry particles will eventually reach the surface but the mass fluxes are generally small compared to tropospheric sources. For example, the global flux of aerosol lead from spacecraft reentry is less than two tons per year compared to atmospheric emissions of over 700 tons per year from just the United States (23). Copper is one element where spacecraft reentry could be an important source. Reentry elements are concentrated over the poles in the lower stratosphere (Fig. 4) and then deposited to the surface at mid- to high-latitudes. If 10% of the copper vaporized in a future reentry scenario (13) were to be deposited on Antarctica, it could possibly double the concentration of copper in Antarctic snow as roughly estimated from total snowfall (24) and copper in recent snow (25). At present, the refractory material in stratospheric particles is mostly iron, silicon, and magnesium from the natural meteoric source. However, the amount of material from the reentry of upper-stage rockets and satellites is projected to increase dramatically in the next 10 to 30 y (13, 26, 27). As a result, the amount of aluminum in stratospheric sulfuric acid particles is expected to become comparable to or even exceed the amount of meteoric iron, with unknown consequences for inclusions and ice nucleation.
Good find
Space termites next?
If I’m not mistaken there are metal eating/corroding microbres that can live in vacuum.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The LignoSat probe has been built of magnolia wood, which, in experiments carried out on the International Space Station (ISS), was found to be particularly stable and resistant to cracking.
To tackle the problem, Kyoto researchers set up a project to evaluate types of wood to determine how well they could withstand the rigours of space launch and lengthy flights in orbit round the Earth.
The first tests were carried out in laboratories that recreated conditions in space, and wood samples were found to have suffered no measurable changes in mass or signs of decomposition or damage.
Murata added that a final decision had still to be made on the launch vehicle, with choices now narrowed down to a flight this summer on an Orbital Sciences Cygnus supply ship to the ISS or a similar SpaceX Dragon mission slightly later in the year.
It is estimated that more than 2,000 spacecraft are likely to be launched annually in coming years, and the aluminium that they are likely to deposit in the upper atmosphere as they burn up on re-entry could soon pose major environmental problems.
Recent research carried out by scientists at the University of British Columbia, Canada, revealed that aluminium from re-entering satellites could cause serious depletion of the ozone layer which protects the Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and could also affect the amount of sunlight that travels through the atmosphere and reaches the ground.
The original article contains 634 words, the summary contains 236 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I wonder if this is good for cleanup. If we invent a method to clean space of aluminium but then have a organic component floating around too. Say a magnet, laser, sonic or whatever but it reacts differently to wood than to aluminum. Could make things more difficult as usually space has no trees and only rocks.
Mmmm space wood.
So wait I’m confused is the idea that the satellite is going to biodegrade in space? Because it wont.
From the article:
“All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.”
I’m kind of baffled you wouldn’t read the Article and instead jump to conclusions and assume that some of the smartest people on the Planet would overlook such a huge flaw.
I think they just expect the wood to shatter less
