The world's first wooden satellite has been built by Japanese researchers who said their tiny cuboid craft will be blasted off on a SpaceX rocket in September.

Each side of the experimental satellite developed by scientists at Kyoto University and logging company Sumitomo Forestry measures just 10 centimeters (four inches).

The creators expect the wooden material will burn up completely when the device re-enters the atmosphere—potentially providing a way to avoid the generation of metal particles when a retired satellite returns to Earth.

These metal particles could have a negative impact on the environment and telecommunications, the developers said as they announced the satellite's completion on Tuesday.

"Satellites that are not made of metal should become mainstream," Takao Doi, an astronaut and special professor at Kyoto University, told a press conference.

Twice per year, New Yorkers and visitors are treated to a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and sinks below the horizon framed in a canyon of skyscrapers.

The event is a favorite of photographers and often brings people out onto sidewalks on spring and summer evenings to watch this unique sunset.

Manhattanhenge happens for the first time this year on May 28 at 8:13 p.m. and May 29 at 8:12 p.m., and will occur again on July 12 and 13.

Some background on the phenomenon:

WHERE DOES THE NAME MANHATTANHENGE COME FROM?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the term in a 1997 article in the magazine Natural History. Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History, said he was inspired by a visit to Stonehenge as a teenager.

The future host of TV shows such as PBS' "Nova ScienceNow" was part of an expedition led by Gerald Hawkins, the scientist who first theorized that Stonehenge's mysterious megaliths were an ancient astronomical observatory.

It struck Tyson, a native New Yorker, that the setting sun framed by Manhattan's high-rises could be compared to the sun's rays striking the center of the Stonehenge circle on the solstice.

SpaceX sent up the 40th rocket launch from the Space Coast on Tuesday morning.

A Falcon 9 carrying 23 Starlink satellites lifted off at 10:24 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40. The launch was delayed from Monday, but SpaceX did not give a reason for why they stood down from that attempt.

The first-stage booster made its 10th flight with a bullseye recovery landing downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

SpaceX has managed 38 of the 40 launches from either Canaveral or neighboring Kennedy Space Center this year, and plans are to turn around launch pads even quicker in the second half of the year so the Space Coast could top 100 launches for the 2024.

This was SpaceX's eighth launch from the Space Coast for May.

All of SpaceX's launches so far have been Falcon 9 launches, but the first Falcon Heavy launch of the year is slated to fly on June 25 carrying the GOES-U weather satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

United Launch Alliance flew the other two Space Coast launches with the first ever Vulcan Centaur launch in January and the final Delta IV Heavy launch in April.