KYOTO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The world's first wooden

satellite, built by Japanese researchers, was launched into

space on Tuesday, in an early test of using timber in lunar and

Mars exploration.

LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder

Sumitomo Forestry ( SMFRF ), will be flown to the International

Space Station on a SpaceX mission, and later released into orbit

about 400 km (250 miles) above the Earth.

Named after the Latin word for "wood", the palm-sized

LignoSat is tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of the

renewable material as humans explore living in space.

"With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we

will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,"

said Takao Doi, an astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle

and studies human space activities at Kyoto University.

With a 50-year plan of planting trees and building timber

houses on the moon and Mars, Doi's team decided to develop a

NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove wood is a space-grade

material.

"Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," said Kyoto

University forest science professor Koji Murata. "A wooden

satellite should be feasible, too."

Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's

no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it, Murata added.

A wooden satellite also minimises the environmental

impact at the end of its life, the researchers say.

Decommissioned satellites must re-enter the atmosphere

to avoid becoming

space debris

. Conventional metal satellites create aluminium oxide

particles during re-entry, but wooden ones would just burn up

with less pollution, Doi said.

"Metal satellites might be banned in the future," Doi said.

"If we can prove our first wooden satellite works, we want to

pitch it to Elon Musk's SpaceX."

INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION

The researchers found that honoki, a kind of magnolia tree

native in Japan and traditionally used for sword sheaths, is

most suited for spacecraft, after a 10-month experiment aboard

the International Space Station.

LignoSat is made of honoki, using a traditional Japanese

crafts technique without screws or glue.

Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in the orbit for six

months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how

wood endures the extreme environment of space, where

temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45

minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.

LignoSat will also gauge wood's ability to reduce the impact

of space radiation on semiconductors, making it useful for

applications such as data centre construction, said Kenji

Kariya, a manager at Sumitomo Forestry Tsukuba Research

Institute.

"It may seem outdated, but wood is actually cutting-edge

technology as civilisation heads to the moon and Mars," he said.

"Expansion to space could invigorate the timber industry."