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News: The European Space Agency (ESA) is going to launch its Biomass mission in end of April, 2025. Biomass mission.
About Biomass mission
- Launching agency: It will be launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), aboard the Vega C rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana.
- It is a dedicated earth observation satellite mission under ESA’s Earth Explorer Programme, designed to map and monitor global forest biomass with unprecedented accuracy.
- Orbit: It will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), at an altitude of around 666 km.
- Instruments: It will be the first satellite to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument, allowing interferometric and tomographic imaging to determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in forests.
- Distinct feature: It’s P-band SAR sensor can peer through clouds, allowing the biomass of trees to be estimated.
About Earth Explore Programme
- It is ESA’s research-driven satellite series designed to explore earth’s dynamic systems.
- The first spacecraft — the gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission (2009-2013).
- The most recent one was the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission (May 2024).
