It isn’t news to say trees are incredible.
From providing shelter and food for our earliest ancestors, to building the ships that helped humans travel and trade their way around the world, life on Earth would have been very different without them (and will be if we continue to cut them down with abandon, but that’s a whole other story).
Now, trees could be set to change life in space too.
Nasa and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), alongside Kyoto University, plan to launch a wood-based satellite known as LignoSat into orbit next year.
The news comes after tests by the International Space Station (ISS) team showed it is highly durable in the harsh environment beyond our atmosphere.
Earlier investigations on Earth had demonstrated wood’s ability to withstand the huge temperature fluctuations observed in space, showing little deterioration in near-vacuum conditions between -150C and 150C.
The latest stage involved exposing three different wood samples to the intense cosmic rays and dangerous solar particles that will bombard it in orbit. Despite being left outside the ISS for 290 days, the samples showed no decomposition or deformations, such as cracking, warping, peeling, or surface damage.
In addition, when future wood-based satellites fall back to Earth, wood will easily burn up in the upper atmosphere – with no harmful byproducts and no risk of surviving re-entry, posing a risk to those below.
And which trees will be blasting off?
Following the ISS research, LignoSat will likely use the hoonoki tree, or magnolia, a native species also known as the Japanese cucumber tree. Sporting grey bark and large deciduous leaves, it produces long, bright pink fruits covered in soft spines.
Speaking after earlier tests, Koji Murata from the biomaterials design lab at Kyoto University said: ‘Wood’s ability to withstand simulated low earth orbit – or LEO – conditions astounded us.’
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