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The WISA Woodsat team is working with the European Space Agency on testing and sensors for the world’s first wooden satellite.
space navigation in the arctic
toothpicks; tables. funds. spoons. Satellites? An ambitious project will send a small wooden satellite into orbit later this year to see if it can withstand the harsh conditions of space.
WISA Woodsat is a 4-inch (10 centimeter) satellite due to launch in the fall on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket in New Zealand. Getting to orbit is only part of the adventure. Once there, the team will monitor the small cube to see how the plywood, formed from the cold, heat, radiation and vacuum of space, holds up.
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Woodsat is the brainchild of Jari Makinen, co-founder of Arctic Astronautics replica CubeSat. The European Space Agency, or ESA, provides an array of sensors to track the satellite’s performance and will also help with pre-flight testing.
These birch plywood boards will form the surface of the WISA Woodsat.
space navigation in the arctic
The only non-wooden parts of the satellite made of plywood on the outside are aluminum rods necessary for launching the satellite into space and an extendable selfie stick that will hold the camera to the rear. The more typical CubeSat will be made with more metal components.
“The base material for plywood is birch, and we use basically the same thing you use in a hardware store or to make furniture,” Woodsat chief engineer and co-founder of Arctic Astronatics Samuli Nyman said in a recent ESA statement. a week.
The plywood used in the satellite has been dried and treated to give it a better chance of standing up to the conditions of space. The Woodsat team expects the outer surface to darken, but they will also be looking to see if there are any cracks developing while in orbit.
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If Woodsat does well, it may stimulate a new look at wood as a potential material for use in space. “In the end, Woodsat is just a beautiful thing in traditional Nordic design and simplicity, and it’s very interesting to see it in orbit,” MacKinen said.
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