The European Space Agency is prepping payloads for a Finnish-built satellite made of wood with aluminum rails for launching and meatal “selfie stick” for a camera:
The mission was initiated by Jari Makinen, Finnish writer and broadcaster. He co-founded a company called Arctic Astronautics, which markets fully functional replicas of orbit-ready CubeSats for education, training and hobby purposes. “I’ve always enjoyed making model planes, involving a lot of wooden parts. Having worked in the space education field, this got me wondering; why don’t we fly any wooden materials in space?
“So I had the idea first of all to fly a wooden satellite up to the stratosphere, aboard a weather balloon. That happened in 2017, with a wooden version of KitSat. That having gone well, we decided to upgrade it and actually go into orbit. From there the project just snowballed: we found commercial backing, and secured a berth on an Electron launcher from Rocket Lab in New Zealand.”
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“The base material for plywood is birch, and we’re using basically just the same as you’d find in a hardware store or to make furniture,” explains Woodsat chief engineer and Arctic Astronatics co-founder Samuli Nyman.
“The main difference is that ordinary plywood is too humid for space uses, so we place our wood in a thermal vacuum chamber to dry it out. Then we also perform atomic layer deposition, adding a very thin aluminium oxide layer – typically used to encapsulate electronics. This should minimise any unwanted vapours from the wood, known as ‘outgassing’ in the space field, while also protecting against the erosive effects of atomic oxygen. We’ll also be testing other varnishes and lacquers on some sections of the wood.”
This highly reactive oxygen variant is found at the fringes of the atmosphere – the result of standard oxygen molecules being broken apart by powerful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun – and was first discovered when it ate away thermal blankets on early Space Shuttle flights.
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As well as the cameras and ESA-donated sensor suite, Woodsat will also carry an amateur radio payload allowing amateurs to relay radio signals and images around the globe. To downlink data from this ‘LoRa’ radio link involves buying a ‘ground station’ costing as little as €10.
“In the end, Woodsat is simply a beautiful object in terms of traditional Nordic design and simplicity, it should be very interesting to see it in orbit,” continues Jari.