Biomass Mission Launched Successfully By ESA
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| The Biomass satellite lifted off aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 29, 2025. |
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Biomass mission has launched successfully, aiming to estimate the Earth's forests and track changes in their carbon storage. This mission uses advanced P-band radar technology to penetrate forest canopies, measuring woody biomass and estimating carbon storage. ESA’s groundbreaking Biomass satellite, designed to provide unprecedented insights into the world’s forests and their crucial role in Earth’s carbon cycle, has been launched.
Here are some key points about the Biomass mission:
- Launch Details: The Biomass satellite lifted off aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 29, 2025. Less than an hour after launch, Biomass separated from the rocket’s upper stage. At 12:28 CEST, the satellite controllers at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Germany received the all-important first signal, relayed via the Troll ground station in Antarctica, that Biomass is working as expected in orbit.
- Mission Objective: The primary goal is to reduce uncertainty in forest carbon estimates, especially related to land-use changes, forest loss, and regrowth. ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “With Biomass, we are poised to gain vital new data on how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests, helping to fill key gaps in our knowledge of the carbon cycle and, ultimately, Earth's climate system.”
- Technology: The satellite uses a P-band synthetic aperture radar, operating in the 300-1000 MHz frequency range, with wavelengths of about 30-100 cm, Its P-band radar penetrates clouds and forest layers, scattering signals off forest elements. These signals reveal details like forest biomass and height. Biomass data will improve knowledge of habitat loss and its effects on biodiversity. The mission also enables the mapping of subsurface geology in deserts, ice sheet structures, and forest floor topography.
-Orbit: Biomass is placed in a sun-synchronous orbit at around 666 km, optimizing sunlight for observations.
- Data Applications: The mission's data will aid climate change mitigation strategies by tracking carbon fluxes between forests and the atmosphere, supporting efforts to manage forests sustainably. In the coming days, controllers will carefully check that all systems on the satellite are working properly and carry out complex steps to unfold its 12-metre-wide antenna. Once complete, Biomass will become part of ESA’s active satellite missions.
- Impact: By providing detailed data on forest structure, biomass, and height, the mission will improve our understanding of forests' role in the carbon cycle and climate. Forests are often referred to as Earth's "green lungs," absorbing about 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year and playing a crucial role in regulating the planet's temperature. However, deforestation and degradation are releasing this stored carbon, worsening climate change. A key challenge is the lack of accurate data on how much carbon forests hold and how this is changing due to climate and land-use shifts. More specifically scientists refer to the ‘biomass’ relating to the total mass of living trees and vegetation, especially the woody parts where most carbon is stored.