The world's first wooden satellite built by Japanese researchers is set to be launched to space in an early test for using timber in lunar and Mars exploration.

LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, heads to the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission and will be released to orbit about 400 km (250 miles) above the earth in the coming weeks.

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.

“Up until now, no country has planned to use wood in space development. Using wood in space paves a way for humans to achieve sustainable and eternal development in space, and I want people around the world to know about such an approach,” said Takao Doi, an astronaut with Space Shuttle mission experience, who studies human space activities at Kyoto University.

Toward his 50-year plan of planting trees and building timber houses on the moon and Mars, Doi's team decided to first develop a NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove wood is a space-grade material.

“The wood used for this satellite comes from a type of magnolia tree - Japanese honoki. Traditionally, it is easy to process and resistant to shattering,” said Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata.

The researchers found that honoki, traditionally used for sword sheaths, is most suited for spacecraft manufacturing, after a 10-month experiment at the International Space Station. LignoSat was made of honoki timber, using a traditional Japanese crafts technique without a screw or glue.

Murata noted that airplanes were made of wood in the early 1900s and that it is more durable in space than on earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it.

A wooden satellite can also minimise environmental impact when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere at the end of its life to prevent becoming a space debris, the researchers say. Conventional metal satellites emit aluminium oxide particles at re-entry, Doi said, which could cause a pollution issue as the number of satellite constellations like SpaceX's Starlink surges.

Once LignoSat is deployed, it will stay in orbit for six months to measure how wood would endure the extreme environment where temperatures fluctuate from -100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes. - Report from Reuters