Pre-flight testing recommends the satellite, which will orbit at around 500-600 km elevation in an approximately polar Sun-synchronous orbit, should survive its atomic oxygen direct exposure. The wood is anticipated to be darkened by the ultraviolet radiation of unfiltered sunlight.
Onboard selfie stick
” We have a pair of onboard cameras, with one extended on a selfie stick to look back at the plywood and take pictures to see how it is behaving,” includes Jari. “We wish to see color modifications, any cracking and so on.”
Designing and manufacturing of the camera boom proved an interesting workout: the structure needs to be little as it can be within the tiny satellite for launch, then extend out as far as possible when in area.
ESAs brand-new LEOX, Low Earth Orbit Facility, being fired for the very first time in April 2017. This brand-new simulator that fires a laser to produce atomic oxygen generally experienced just in low orbits– and understood to eat away at satellite surfaces. LEOX generates atomic oxygen at energy levels that are comparable to orbital speed– 7.8 km/s– to imitate the space environment as carefully as possible. It can likewise test at a higher circulation, saving money and time for testing. Cleansed molecular oxygen is injected into a vacuum chamber with a pulsing laser beam focused onto it. With a purple flash each time the laser is fired, the oxygen is converted into a hot plasma whose quick growth is channeled along a cone-shaped nozzle. It then dissociates to form a highly energetic beam of atomic oxygen. The brand-new facility is housed in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory, among a suite of laboratories at ESAs technical center in the Netherlands, committed to replicating every element of the space environment. Credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The worlds very first wooden satellite is on the way, in the shape of the Finnish WISA Woodsat. ESA products experts are contributing a suite of speculative sensors to the mission as well as aiding with pre-flight testing. Credit: Arctic Astronautics
The worlds first wooden satellite is on the way, in the shape of the Finnish WISA Woodsat. ESA materials professionals are contributing a suite of experimental sensors to the objective as well as assisting with pre-flight screening.
WISA Woodsat is a 10x10x10 cm CubeSat– a kind of nanosatellite developed from standardized boxes– but with surface area panels made from plywood. Woodsats only non-wooden external parts are corner aluminum rails used for its release into space plus a metal selfie stick.
“Ive always taken pleasure in making model planes, involving a lot of wooden parts. Having worked in the space education field, this got me questioning; why do not we fly any wood materials in space?

WISA Woodsat. Credit: Arctic Astronautics
” So I had the idea initially of all to fly a wood satellite up to the stratosphere, aboard a weather condition balloon. That happened in 2017, with a wooden variation of KitSat. That having gone well, we decided to upgrade it and actually go into orbit. From there the task simply grew out of control: we found industrial backing, and protected a berth on an Electron launcher from Rocket Lab in New Zealand.”
ESA sensors to smell Woodsats interior
Riccardo Rampini, heading ESAs Materials Physics and Chemistry area, remarks: “Its been a tight schedule but we invited the opportunity to contribute to Woodsats payload in return for assisting evaluate its suitability for flight.
” The very first item were embarking is a pressure sensing unit, which will enable us to determine the regional pressure in onboard cavities in the hours and days after launch into orbit. This is a crucial element for the turn-on of high power systems and radio-frequency antennas, due to the fact that small quantities of molecules in the cavity can possibly trigger them harm.
Exposing the WISA Woodsat style. Credit: Arctic Astronautics
” This sensing unit is being built for us by Sens4 in Denmark, who have done a terrific job to remove down their basic style to fit minimal onboard volume and power restrictions.”
ESA materials engineer Bruno Bras adds: “The good idea here is we have actually ended up designing an inexpensive device that could discover all sort of additional usages, both in orbit and down on the ground in test environments.”
Beside it will be a simple LED with a photoresistor that senses as it illuminate. But the LEDs power will come through a 3D-printed electrically-conductive plastic called polyether ether ketone, or PEEK for brief, opening the possibility of printing power or even data links directly within the bodies of future area missions.
ESAs technical heart: ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Credit: ESA-G. Porter
ESA materials engineer Orcun Ergincan remarks: “The other item is a quartz crystal microbalance, acting as an extremely delicate contamination tracking tool, determining any faint deposits in the nanogram range originating from onboard electronics in addition to the wood surface areas themselves. This has actually been contributed by OpenQCM in Italy. This business is also building the general printed circuit board stack hosting all three demonstrators with incorporated sensing units.”
Plywood for Woodsat
Sponsors for Woodsat consist of UPM Plywood in Finland, amongst the largest plywood makers on the planet.
” The base product for plywood is birch, and were utilizing generally just the exact same as you d find in a hardware store or to make furnishings,” explains Woodsat primary engineer and Arctic Astronautics co-founder Samuli Nyman.
Comprised of more than 20 devoted experimental centers and numerous instruments in general, ESAs Materials & & Electrical Components Laboratory ensures an ideal option of electrical components, materials and processes for ESA missions and external tasks, considering the distinct ecological obstacles involved in building for area, additionally investigating failures to ensure comparable issues do not occur on future objectives. Credit: ESA

” The design was made by Finnish engineering business Huld, pushing 3D printing to its limitations,” adds Jari. “For Huld the Woodsat job has actually already proved an important recommendation point for getting in other space mechanics jobs, too.”
As the video cameras and ESA-donated sensor suite, Woodsat will likewise bring an amateur radio payload permitting beginners to relay radio signals and images around the world. To downlink information from this LoRa radio link involves purchasing a ground station costing just EUR10.

The worlds first wooden satellite is on the way, in the shape of the Finnish WISA Woodsat. ESA materials professionals are contributing a suite of experimental sensors to the objective as well as helping with pre-flight screening. ESAs technical heart: ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. ESA products engineer Orcun Ergincan comments: “The other item is a quartz crystal microbalance, serving as an extremely delicate contamination tracking tool, measuring any faint deposits in the nanogram range coming from onboard electronic devices as well as the wood surface areas themselves. The new facility is housed in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory, one of a suite of laboratories at ESAs technical center in the Netherlands, committed to simulating every element of the space environment.

” The primary distinction is that regular plywood is too damp for space uses, so we place our wood in a thermal vacuum chamber to dry it out. Then we likewise carry out atomic layer deposition, including an extremely thin aluminum oxide layer– normally used to encapsulate electronics. This ought to lessen any undesirable vapors from the wood, called outgassing in the area field, while also safeguarding versus the erosive impacts of atomic oxygen. Well likewise be checking other varnishes and lacquers on some areas of the wood.”
This highly reactive oxygen variant is discovered at the fringes of the environment– the result of basic oxygen molecules being broken apart by effective ultraviolet radiation from the Sun– and was very first discovered when it ate away thermal blankets on early Space Shuttle flights.
On Woodsat, ESA materials engineers are embarking a pressure sensing unit, a test of electrically conductive plastic and a quartz crystal microbalance, all housed on the very same printed circuit board, plus a test of shape memory alloy. Credit: ESA

” In the end, Woodsat is just a beautiful things in terms of conventional Nordic design and simplicity, it ought to be very interesting to see it in orbit,” continues Jari. “Our hope is it assists inspire individuals to take increased interest in satellites and the area sector as something that currently touches all our lives, and is just going to get larger in future.”
Woodsat is due to release prior to the end of this year.