Wooden Satellites: Japan Attempts to Lessen Space Junk by Going Green

According to the BBC, the Japanese logging company, Sumitomo Forestry, is working together with Kyoto University's leading scholars on space technology to develop a completely functional space satellite using wood as the primary material. Yes, wood. They aim to launch the project into orbit by the year 2023.

Wooden Satellites

(Photo : Photo from NASA)

Takai Doi, a Japanese astronaut and a professor at Kyoto University, told the BBC that using wooden satellites would benefit the environment both outside and inside the planet. When compared to metal satellites, they do not release as many harmful particles when it falls out of orbit or during re-entry.

Doi stated that "We are very concerned with the fact that 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."

The researchers working on the project attempts to understand how wood performs to extreme environmental conditions both inside and outside the planet.

Kyoto University engineers are engineering satellite models made out of wood and testing how they will compare to the traditional metal.

Sumitomo Forestry's contribution to the project is the development of a wooden material that will be highly resistant to temperature changes and one that can survive extreme exposure to the sun and the intense coldness of space.

Space Junks

Aside from particles that might possibly spread in the air, debris satellites are also dangerous.

As of the present, there are approximately 6,000 circling the planet. But among those, only 40% are operational. That means about 60% of those satellites are defunct; they are nothing more than space junks. Pollution in space.

The growing number of space junks poses a major problem for space missions and the planet.

These space junks are traveling, or floating, at an alarming speed because of their inactivity; no one is navigating them. This situation can be a risk to other functional satellites as they might crash unto them and destroy them.

Aside from the possibility of satellite collisions in space, these unnavigated chunks of heavy metal and machinery might also freefall towards the planet. Sure some, or even most, of these space junks might burn during re-entry; however, the remaining debris is still a threat to anyone or anything unlucky enough to be on its path. 

If the Japanese researchers and developers working on the project succeed in accomplishing their goals, chances are, these wooden satellites would not even pose a threat because it might just burn during the re-entry.

The development of these wooden satellites is a serious leap in the right direction when it comes to dealing with and handling the space junk problem.

However, it may be a giant leap for the Japanese Space program; experts said that to make a bigger and more significant difference, more organizations and companies should exert effort in dealing with them. Especially now that several prominent companies like Space X and Amazon are planning to launch thousands of satellites for their campaign to create global satellite connectivity, the stakes for cleaning up and managing these junks are higher.