Biomass

Biomass is the European Space Agency Earth observation satellite built to measure how much carbon is held in the world's forests. It was launched on 29 April 2025 on a Vega C rocket from Kourou in French Guiana and is the seventh of ESA's Earth Explorer missions. Its main instrument is a fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar operating at 435 MHz, the first radar of that wavelength flown in orbit, which sees through the forest canopy using a 12 metre deployable reflector antenna. The spacecraft orbits at an altitude of 666 kilometres, weighs around 1.2 tonnes and was designed to last five years. Airbus Defence and Space in the United Kingdom was contracted in 2016 to build it. The radar covers forests between 75 degrees north and 56 degrees south but leaves out North and Central America and Europe to avoid interfering with defence space tracking radars, and its data stream was opened to the public in January 2026.