Mission to Assess Earth's Tree Mass Takes Flight

A new satellite has been launched with the mission of scrutinizing the world's forests to gain fresh insights into their role in the global carbon cycle, declared the European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday.

Named Biomass, this satellite was sent aloft via a rocket from Europe's Kourou Spaceport located in New Guinea. It detached from its vehicle in under an hour following the launch. The ESA confirmed the satellite's proper functioning in orbit after mission controllers picked up its initial signal approximately 75 minutes post-launch.

In the upcoming days, those managing the satellite will oversee its initial operation phase, ensuring all systems are functioning as they should. The satellite is set to execute a series of complex movements to unfold a vast mesh reflector almost 40 feet in diameter, which is essential for collecting forest data.

Global forests collectively absorb close to 8 billion tons of CO2 annually, which helps to moderate Earth's climate. However, the destruction and deterioration of forests, especially in tropical regions, lead to the release of this stored carbon back into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change. Precise information is lacking on the carbon content stored across the estimated 1.5 trillion trees and how human activities affect this storage capacity.

To 'measure' the world's forests and assess their carbon reservoir capacity, Biomass is equipped with a P-band synthetic aperture radar, groundbreaking technology in space. This radar penetrates forest canopies, gauging woody biomass including trunks, branches, and stems, where most tree carbon resides. These readings will serve as indicators of carbon storage levels.

"Biomass is poised to deliver critical new information on the carbon content within global forests, thereby improving our understanding of the carbon cycle and, ultimately, the Earth's climate," according to Simonetta Cheli, ESA's Earth observation program director.

Once gathered by the radar, the data will be relayed by the expansive mesh reflector to the ESA's mission operations center.

Currently orbiting above the Amazon, Biomass will survey several of the planet's rainforests. Additionally, its tools have applications in various settings, including mapping underground geological formations in deserts, examining ice sheet details, and assessing forest floor structure.