ESA’s Biomass Mission:
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.
- 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.
- 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.
