The European Space Agency has just put a new mission of land observation in orbit. Equipped with the first synthetic opening radar in band P that travels to space, Biomass will make the most precise measurements so far from the forests of the world.
Successful launch. The satellite took off on April 29 at 11:15 Cest from the European Space Puerto of Kouroou, in the French Guiana. He did it aboard a Vega-C rocket, which with this fourth launch has definitely resumed his activity after two years of delays for a failure in his second flight.
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Less than an hour later, Biomass separated correctly from the rocket, sending its first signal to confirm that everything works as planned. The mission has officially joined the Earth Explorers of ESA, missions designed to do science on the planet Earth.
We do not know the forests well. Forests cover almost a third of the earth’s surface. The reason we call them “the green lungs of the planet” is that they play a vital role absorbing and storing gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide: about 8,000 million net tons per year, which help regulate the global temperature.
Deforestation, forest degradation and changes in land use, especially in tropical areas (which house 70% of the terrestrial biomass), return the carbon stored to the atmosphere, aggravating global warming. The problem is that we do not know how much carbon the forests really store and how they are responding to factors such as the increase in temperatures, the atmospheric CO2 and human activity.
This is where Biomass comes into play. The satellite will measure with unprecedented precision the amount of biomass (and therefore carbon) stored in the forests of our planet, as well as its evolution over time, to better understand the carbon cycle and the climate system of the Earth.
Most of the carbon (it is estimated that 50% of the weight of a tree) is stored in the wood: trunk, branches and stems. The unique radar capacity in Biomass B band allows you to directly measure the amount of woody biomass (wood under the foliage of forests, the main forest carbon warehouse) on a global scale and with unusual precision from space.
The secret is on the radar. The great innovation of Biomass is its main instrument, built by Airbus: the first synthetic opening radar (SAR) in band P that travels to space. The radars work by sending microwaves and analyzing the echo that bounces on the surface. The key is in the wavelength. The P waves are long, much more than those used by other radar satellites such as the Sentinel-1 (band c) or the future Nisar (band L).
This wavelength allows you to penetrate the dense cover of forests (the forest canopy) and even cross the clouds or rain, interacting directly with the woody parts of the trees (trunks and thick branches) and the forest floor. By measuring how the radar signal is dispersed when it collides with these elements, scientists can obtain detailed information about the structure of the forest, estimate their height and, most importantly, calculate the amount of woody organic matter above the ground.
There is a delicate deployment. In order to project this radar signal effectively, the satellite will display in the next few days an impressive 12 -meter diameter reflective antenna, sustained by a 7.5 meter arm. A complex, but essential maneuver for the success of the mission.
Biomass will operate in two main phases during its 5 and a half years of useful life: a 18 -month -old tomographic phase, in which it will perform multiple passes over the same areas from slightly different angles to create a 3D map of the forest structure. And an interferometric phase of 4 years in which it will use the difference between signals to measure changes in the height and density of the forest, estimating the variation of biomass over time.
As we know that approximately half of that biomass is carbon, the mission will allow mapping indirectly, but very precise, where and how much carbon is stored in the forests, and what rhythm is being emitted.
Imagen | ESA-SJM Photography
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