Biomass

Mission Profile

Biomass is an ESA Earth Explorer satellite launched on 29 April 2025 aboard a Vega-C, designed to produce the first comprehensive global measurements of forest biomass — the carbon stored in forest wood — using a P-band synthetic aperture radar that can penetrate through dense forest canopies to the ground. Forest biomass is the largest uncertainty in the global carbon cycle, and Biomass will map above-ground forest carbon stocks worldwide at 200-meter resolution, providing critical data for climate models and international carbon accounting frameworks under the Paris Agreement. The P-band radar can also penetrate dry soil for subsurface imaging of geological structures and archaeology at certain depths. Biomass is the first satellite to carry a P-band SAR in space, pioneering a new wavelength band for spaceborne Earth observation.