biomass

A continuation of our Engineering Journeys, with the interview of Bjorn and Klaus, respectively ESA Mission Scientist and ESA Mission Manager.

By Chris Lloyd, Airbus Biomass Project Manager

Chris

Today I am very privileged to be meeting with two of the Biomass science team here in Kourou, at the Launch site.   We are now just over a week away from the launch of the mission, so I wanted to catch up with Bjorn and Klaus on their expectations for the mission and how they came to work on the Biomass mission.

So first a quick introduction.

Bjorn

I’m Bjorn Rommen. I’m the Mission Scientist for the Biomass mission, working at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk, in the Netherlands.

Klaus

I’m Klaus Scipal. I’m the mission manager of the Biomass mission, and I’m working in ESRIN in Italy.

Chris

So, let’s go back a little bit in time, what was the first things that excited you about science and engineering, and what was your inspiration and motivation to come into the area of work you now do?

Bjorn

Okay, from a quite early age, I got quite fascinated by technology.  When I was a really young kid, I think there was not a clear direction yet. Computers were coming out. Of course, nowadays people have laptops, mobile phones and tablets with touch screens but when I was young, it was the time when the first home computers were coming out.

Chris

What was your first home computer?

Bjorn

The Atari, 600XL with just 16 kilobytes of RAM. I was eight years old. At the same time, I was also playing around with CB radio and with antennas. So I started already around eight years, playing around with computers, programming in BASIC and working with antennas a bit, asking my dad to drill a hole in the in the house, to get the antenna cable through. So yes, I was very much fascinated with engineering by the time I was 15 or 16 years old.  I went on to study electrical engineering in Delft.

Klaus

I think for me, it was very similar. As a kid, I was super curious, and I got easily distracted, because I always wanted to see something new, or when I saw something new, I wanted to understand it and to investigate it. I also started to take everything apart, such as radios, try to understand them, and at that time, I didn’t understand them, so I couldn’t fix them. I probably ruined them even more. But I think it was this interest for how things work that drove me.   I entered university, I studied Land surveying, so I had an engineering background, but more in the Applied Science.  And as part of this study, we were looking at the aerial images and laser scanning systems, and that really intrigued me, having this, this overview of the earth, and trying to understand how things work on a larger scale, and how they function, that was really fascinating me. That’s how I came into Remote Sensing. Okay by pure chance, I have to say.

Chris

Yes, this luck in finding yourself in the right place has been a theme in these interviews

Klaus

I mean, for me, meeting the right person at the right time, not planning your career, but taking a decision when it was there and then you follow your path somehow.

Bjorn

While I was studying electrical engineering, theoretical electromagnetics was really interesting me.  Subjects like field theory, Maxwell’s equations. And afterwards, when I was almost finalizing my degree, I was thinking, okay, a very nice application of this is actually radar. And I thought, okay, earth observation is also pretty cool. At this point I had not done any work with any space agency or space related things, I thought, just, this is a beautiful application of the studies I had undertaken. So, then you just have to run into the people who are able to give you the chance, then it just happens from there.

Klaus

I think that’s the beauty about earth observation. It is because you have this technical background where you start from and study physics or whatever, and then you have this ability, or this chance to move into applying it to some real world problem, to understand how the earth works, and I think that makes it very attractive.

Chris

Staying with you Klaus. As the Biomass Mission Manager What’s your role now in biomass?

Klaus

So the mission manager takes over the mission actually, after the mission is launched and commissioned, so once all the instruments are proved to work and perform as expected. The mission is handed over from the Project to the Mission Manager, who is then responsible to run the mission during the operational phase, to make sure that all the products going out have the right connection to the science communities. That they are taking up this data and also to evolve all this data and the algorithms we use.  This is the process we use to derive all our biophysical products, in the case of biomass.  Links with our member states, also very important to keep their interest. And also for future programs, to continue developing our programmes.

Chris

Bjorn, what is your role and how does is it fit into the Biomass mission.

Bjorn

As a mission scientist, you’re responsible for preparing the science of the mission, so it’s not carrying out the science yourself. You make sure that the science has been prepared properly. And with this, of course, you have a large team. In fact, a large team outside of ESA mostly to work with you, to try to get the science matured to the right level.  Nowadays, we work with scientific readiness levels to make sure that the science is prepared to the right level, to make sure that at the time of the launch we are we are sufficiently mature to start to exploit the data right away and to do actual science with it. This is the main role of the mission scientist. 

Klaus

I think what maybe to add to that, what is nice in both our jobs, Mission Scientist and mission manager, is that we see the bit between the engineers and the scientists. So, we connect these two teams.  So we have a very good overview, and talk to both, which is super exciting.

Bjorn

That’s actually a very, good point. I forgot to mention, of course, as a mission scientist, you really are the go between, between the engineers and the scientists. When the scientists talk to the engineers, there’s a complete mismatch sometimes. So, we need to translate things probably a bit both ways, which means that the mission scientist role at ESA is to make sure that the right messages come across and that you actually translate it to something actionable for the engineers. For example the mission requirements into science requirements for the actual mission to be developed and vice versa.  You need to understand what it means if a certain system requirement cannot be met, and what it actually means to the mission in terms of the science data exploitation.

Chris

Okay, that leads us nicely into next theme that I wanted to discuss.  How the data is actually used.  So, who wants to go first?  just talking through how that data is collected and distributed and post processing of the data collected?

Klaus

If you’re not a radar expert, radar is a very different way to look at the earth when compared to optics.  Maybe the closest link to how it works is to look at the bat, which is a forest animal, so we stay in the Biomass theme. So, we send down a signal, and if there is some structure, it gets reflected by the structure, and we receive the signal back at the sensor, and that tells us something about how much forest is there, how many trees, how the structure is, how tall the trees are. And we can use these signals that we measure to convert into something like forest height and the biomass that is stored in the forest.  This is then something that scientists can then use to study, how forests are changing. Forests change for many reasons. They get de-forestated, forest fires, where they get destroyed. Forests grow, of course, they absorb carbon from the atmosphere and grow, which is also one of the main reasons for this mission, as we want to measure how the forest changes and how it affects the carbon cycle on a global scale. So, this is how we collect data and what we do afterwards with it. And there’s many methods in between, how you transfer the signals that you measure from the satellite into a measurement of biomass. What is exciting, for example, I mean, for Biomass, an Earth Explorer, being something completely new, for example, for the first time from space, we use tomography. Tomography works very similar like a CT scanner in a hospital. It takes a lot of images of your body, if you have ever been in one, and then translates this into an image of your body. And we can do this now from space with forests. We take a lot of images of the forest and convert that into a 3d image of the forest, how it’s layered, and how the structure is distributed. Of course, not with the resolution and accuracy of a CT scan in the hospital of course, but it can still give us some very new insights that we have never had before, how biomass is distributed.

Chris

Who are going to be the people that use this data?

Bjorn

Once we have a product, one thing is to get from the measurement, as Klaus mentioned, to go to what we call satellite products. But once the satellite products are there, then actually,  the real journey starts. Then you have the scientists that are coming in try to use the data. With the radar, you measure something that is still initially in engineering values. For example, power;  a power that is being reflected, and that is something you receive in the end. You want to translate it to what we call bio- or geo-physical parameter space. For Biomass the main ones would be forest height and biomass, both biophysical parameters. We are working towards building maps that are, instead of something that comes from an engineering value goes directly into the biophysical parameter space. Then it’s something that can be easily interpreted by the scientists that are working on interpreting this bio or geo physical parameters.  They will then work on their models to try to understand better, maybe they’re missing some key parameter in their models for example, how the climate projections are going to look like in years from now, or how the forest will evolve over a period of years.  And then later on, it may actually propagate as well into information that can be used as well for societal benefits. So, moving towards, let’s say, decision makers. The decision makers are really, I think, almost at the end of the chain.  The first thing is that the scientists are going to make use of this data, and explore the mission. It’s the first time looking at the planet with our P band goggles, we’re going to see new things, completely new aspects of the planet. This is something where the scientists will first have to make a leap forward to interpret the data, before we can actually go towards something that is further down the line.

Klaus

We do something for the first time, a unique opportunity. There’s a lot of unknowns which we know and have strategies to cope with for example, effect of the ionosphere.  We have an understanding what might happen, but we are not very knowledgeable yet.  We basically don’t know how the performance will look like at the end.  There will be other unknowns that we don’t even know yet. I think it will take quite some time in the beginning that we really deliver something where we can say it’s robust enough that we can give this to the scientists and they can start putting the data into their models or validating the models against the observations. But this is the uniqueness of all earth explorers.  This is what makes it so exciting as well, because it’s really not a routine thing where you push a button and then things start to flow. It’s really learning every day and seeing things that probably no one else has seen before. Really exciting.

Chris

This end goal and the uniqueness has been driving the satellite team

I’ve driven up and down Route D’Espace this past few weeks, I am driving through the corner of the jungle forest that we are about to measure.  For the two of you,  a major portion of your careers  has been dedicated to developing these models, advising people  about what this mission can do. Here we are on the corner of one of the great forests in the world. It must be amazing to know that this mission is going to launch from the tiny little cut-out that we’ve got here in Kourou.

Bjorn

It’s super interesting to know that we’re actually launching from the same place we’re going to observe, yes, exactly the same message that Klaus and myself brought as well to the forest researchers that we met a couple of days ago. It is quite unique that a mission being launched from here is actually going to be looking in the backyard.

Klaus

It was here that we had our first airborne campaign, for the first time people making observations of tropical forests using tomography and all these things. It was 2009 so 16 years ago. So, coming back now and saying, okay, in two weeks time, we launch the satellite, and we will do this from space. It’s super exciting.

Klaus

We need to see how our algorithms, that we have been working on for the last 10 years or so, if they really work with Biomass’ data, and what we get out of this at the end, and then getting the first global picture will be exciting.  I remember as a student, I was working on soil moisture, and we started off small experiments, and I got so excited, we’re just processing the whole global data set, because every time there was something new, every time I moved to a new area, you saw some new stuff, it’s really beautiful.  You switch on the computer, run it all night, and you come in the morning and you see some new results. I think that will be the same for this mission. Working with the ecologists gives a whole new perspective.  The way they see or they look at forests, because it’s a living environment, so trees compete against each other, they die. And the way ecologists talk, it’s like they talk about living people.  They will explain that this tree is dying or  the trees are fighting each other for space and light, and they have all sort of mechanisms to protect themselves. This makes it also very exciting.

That makes also the community we work with very exciting too. Everybody can really relate to this, and you want to protect the forest.  It’s not like other quantities where you say, Okay, you measure the topography or something, which is also very important, or you measure gravity or another abstract quantity, but here you can really connect to it. And that’s because everyone has a forest in the backyard or somewhere close, I think, this makes it also very special to work on this mission.

Bjorn

The first algorithms started really with exploiting reflectivity only. And since then, of course, the mission has really grown in using measurement techniques that have really evolved over time, as now we have interferometry, we have tomography, and the algorithms we have got more complex as to make sure that we be able to make robust estimates for biomass.  The amount of data that will come from biomass is immense compared to anything that we have from our airborne campaigns. This is going to be really mind boggling trying to understand how the first data has to be interpreted, and how these actually can be fit with actual validation sites, for example the one that we’ve been visiting here this week (Paracou), where people have already been working for the last 40 years, collecting information about trees over time. We can then relate that type of data to actually what we’re seeing from space with Biomass. Klaus has been as well involved in an initiative called Geo-Trees, to work on expanding our knowledge in mainly the tropics, using in situ parameterization, to try to help us to interpret our data. And to really get to some robust products and maps that can be easily interpreted. Once you get to a global biomass map, then it becomes more straight forward for people to use it. So we go from super complex algorithms to something that in the end, any forest ecologist will hopefully be able to interpret. And this is the challenge, and will remain a challenge for the next couple of years.

Chris

It was another theme that got picked up in the last weeks over the fact that these missions only happen because you have shared knowledge. It’s not somebody just ploughing a lonely furrow. I have been lucky to have met some of the MAG  and they are all exceptional people,  but you need all of them together to come and create something so amazing as this mission

Klaus

I mean, all this 10 years or 15 years of mission development. You see some conflicts in science. I mean, a lot of discussion, tough discussion, also discussion with the engineers can be super tough sometimes. Challenging each other brings us forward, but I think it also lets you grow together. And that was also a very nice journey, from the first ideas around 2005 and first campaign data sets few years later, then working with industry. Sometimes it is painful but I think at the end, everyone is super satisfied and happy. What came out of this long journey together.

Chris

Okay, so just under two weeks to go now. Where are you going to be for the launch?

Bjorn

Actually, both Klaus and myself are going to be in ESOC, in our operations centre. For us, it’s a super exciting place to be, because that’s where the first acquisition of signals from the satellite will be received.

Chris

Do you two actually have roles on the on the day, or you get to kind of sit back and enjoy the experience?

Bjorn

We have some roles I mean, of course, we are not in the operation centre, so this is really left to the specialists. But we will inform the community there what the mission is about. We will be available for questions and answers and there is lots of media interest.

Klaus

Also, most of the mission advisory group will be there as well. So, all the scientists that have been supporting us over all years, and the science teams, also external science teams, they will come together. It’s going to be a nice social event with the people that have been contributing to this mission, for some of them, over many decades already. There’s such a big interest in this mission, we link to something people can understand.

Chris:

Okay, we need to wrap up our little chat here. Thanks for taking the time to come and explain your roles and how it all fits into the wider Biomass Mission.  Your passion for this mission is very tangible, all the best for launch day.