WISA Woodsat, the first wooden satellite, celebrated the UN’s World Space Week by launching an initiative to collect 100 Messages to Planet Earth and by taking selected messages onboard WISA Woodsat for a space ride. Source: Timberbiz
World Space Week from 4-10 October is an official United Nations’ theme week that is celebrated in over 95 nations. The week has its origins in the commemoration of the launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957, kicking off the space age, but today the week has a broader significance as an international celebration of science and technology.
“WISA Woodsat is an interesting material science mission, and a satellite made of renewable raw material is a message. Resources of our planet are finite. We need to adapt our lifestyle to the resources and use renewable, recyclable, and reusable materials,” Ari Voutilainen, WISAWoodsat project manager for UPM Plywood said.
Now you have a unique opportunity to send your own Message to Planet Earth by launching it to space with WISA Woodsat.
Propose your Message to Planet Earth by sending a direct message (DM) to@wisawoodsat either in Twitter or Instagram by 6 November 2021.
See www.wisawoodsat.space for specific instructions.
The team will select a set of 100 messages, that will travel to space with WISA Woodsat. Selected messages will be published on the WISA Woodsat homepage, wisawoodsat.space, and other media.
“Adding the Messages to Planet Earth to satellite’s payload is not only a pleasure, but also another effort to popularize space technology and it’s benefits. From space you have a unique perspective of our blue planet and our responsibility take good care of it,” said WISA Woodsat mission manager Jari Mäkinen of Arctic Astronautics.
The WISA Woodsat team is currently preparing the final assembly of the satellite and a spare one, and they are scheduled to be ready for flight by the end of 2021.
WISA Woodsat is the world’s first satellite using wood in its primary structure. It is made of WISA-Birch plywood, which is coated against strong UV radiation using a new atomic layer deposition method.
WISA Woodsat will be launched to space from New Zealand using Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. The mission is exploring the behavior of plywood in space for a period of two years. The countdown to WISA Woodsat’s launch can be followed on the mission website www.wisawoodsat.space and in social media channels with the handles @wisawoodsat and #wisawoodsat.
