Biomass mission

Set to fly in 2025, ESA’s Biomass Earth Explorer satellite with its 12-m diameter radar antenna will pierce through woodland canopies to perform a global survey of Earth’s forests – and see how they change over the course of Biomass’s five-year mission.

Around 30% of Earth’s land surface is covered by forest. Absorbing around 8 Gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forests play a crucial role in the carbon cycle and climate system. ESA’s Biomass mission will measure forest biomass and will lead to a better understanding of the state of Earth’s forests, how they are changing over time, and advance our knowledge of the carbon cycle. 

Biomass will achieve this using a ‘synthetic aperture radar’ to send down signals from orbit and record the resulting backscatter, building up maps of tree height and volume. To see through leafy treetop to the trees themselves, Biomass will employ long-wavelength ‘P-band’ radar, which has never previously flown in space. It will have its signals amplified to travel down from a 600-km altitude orbit down to Earth and back.

• CREDIT
  University of Sheffield/NCEO/Humanstudio

LICENCE
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