“ satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years,” Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, told BBC News’ “Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth.”
In 2020, a team of Japanese researchers launched the LignoStella Space Wood Projectto test the durability of three different types of wood in space: Erman’s birch, Japanese cherry and magnolia bovate. They subjected the samples to exposure tests for more than 290 days on the International Space Station before returning them to Earth earlier this year. The team’s analysis found that despite the harsh conditions of space, the wood samples had no measurable changes in mass and showed no signs of decomposition or damage.
“When you use wood on Earth, you have the problems of burning, rotting and deformation, but in space, you don’t have those problems: There is no oxygen in space, so it doesn’t burn, and no living creatures live in them, so they don’t rot,” Koji Murata, a researcher at Kyoto University, tells CNN’s Rebecca Cairns.
