Wooden satellite could be orbiting the Earth by 2021

A satellite made of wood sounds like a concept ripped from the pages of Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks. But Finnish company Arctic Astronautics wants to launch one into space by the end of 2021. 

The WISA Woodsat, a microsatellite constructed out of plywood, was hoisted via weather balloon Saturday almost 20 miles above Earth. It was in the stratosphere to test the plywood construction in space-like conditions.  

It was armed with a selfie stick to document its journey and a sensor package supplied by the European Space Agency.

A physically unimposing 4-inch cube, Woodsat's "space plywood," made by UPM Plywood, is dried out in a vacuum chamber and coated in a thin layer of aluminum oxide to keep it from degrading amid the highly reactive oxygen above the Earth's atmosphere. Read more...

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