ESA's Biomass Mission

ESA's Biomass Mission Latest News

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to launch a landmark space mission called the Biomass Mission, which will provide the first-ever comprehensive global measurements of forest biomass.

About the Mission

• The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a pioneering mission called the Biomass Mission, scheduled for April 29, 2025.
• The satellite will be launched aboard a Vega C rocket from Korou Spaceport in French Guiana.
• It will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 666 km, ensuring the satellite observes the Earth under consistent lighting conditions.

Objective and Significance

• The Biomass Mission aims to generate the first-ever global measurements of forest biomass, providing data that is currently severely lacking at a planetary scale.
• The mission seeks to map the world’s forests and understand how they are changing over time, contributing to the study of the global carbon cycle.
• Forests are a vital component of the carbon cycle, acting as carbon sinks. They currently store 861 gigatonnes of carbon in vegetation and soils and absorb around 16 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ annually.
• By tracking changes in forest carbon content, the mission will improve our understanding of carbon emissions, deforestation, and climate change.
• The mission responds to urgent concerns: in 2023 alone, the planet lost 3.7 million hectares of tropical forests—equivalent to losing 10 football fields of forest per minute, contributing to about 6% of global CO₂ emissions.

Key Technologies Used

• The satellite is equipped with a 12-meter antenna and utilizes Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to map the Earth's surface.
• Notably, it is the first satellite in space to use a P-band SAR, which is a long-wavelength radar system capable of penetrating dense forest canopies.
• This advanced technology allows measurement of carbon stored both in the canopy and on the forest floor, offering insights into how much biomass and hence, carbon is present.
• Since longer wavelengths penetrate more deeply than shorter ones, the P-band SAR is uniquely suited for generating 3D images of forests, from the canopy down to the tree roots.

ESA's Biomass Mission FAQs

Q1. What is ESA’s Biomass Mission?
Ans. It is the Earth Explorer satellite mission to map global forest biomass using a P-band radar, aiding carbon cycle studies and climate change mitigation.

Q2. How does Biomass support climate action?
Ans. By measuring forest carbon stocks, it provides data for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation) initiatives and monitors illegal logging.

Q3. What makes Biomass’s technology unique?
Ans. Its P-band radar penetrates dense canopies to measure tree height/biomass, overcoming limitations of optical sensors in cloudy regions.

Source: IE