After years of meticulous design and collaboration among over 50 companies led by Airbus UK, ESA’s latest innovation, the Biomass satellite, has embarked on its mission to transform our understanding of Earth’s forests and their pivotal role in regulating the carbon cycle. With the goal of offering unprecedented insights into global biomass, this state-of-the-art satellite is poised to reshape environmental research.

On 29 April 2025 at 11:15 CEST, Biomass lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, riding on the advanced Vega-C rocket. This evolved member of the Vega family is engineered to deliver enhanced performance, greater payload capacities, and improved overall competitiveness. Designed to push beyond previous technical boundaries, Biomass carries the first fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar into orbit—an instrument capable of penetrating dense forest canopies to directly measure the woody components such as trunks, branches, and stems, which are key indicators of carbon storage.

The core mission of Biomass is to map the woody material in Earth’s forests with unparalleled precision. Forests, often celebrated as “Earth’s green lungs,” absorb nearly 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, playing an essential role in climate regulation. They play a vital role in Earth’s carbon cycle by absorbing and storing large amounts of carbon dioxide, helping to regulate the planet’s temperature. However, rampant deforestation and degradation, particularly in tropical regions, are releasing stored carbon back into the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Biomass’ sophisticated radar system bypasses cloud cover and forest layers, scattering signals off various structural elements to derive essential data on biomass and canopy height. This information is vital for assessing carbon storage and enhancing our climate models.

In a testament to its robust design, Biomass separated from the upper stage of the Vega-C rocket less than an hour after launch. At 12:27 CEST, ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Germany received the crucial first signal relayed via the Troll ground station in Antarctica, confirming that the satellite was operational in orbit. The “launch and early orbit” phase is now underway, during which engineers will systematically verify the performance of all systems. Just a week after its launch, the Biomass mission reached another significant milestone: on 07 May 2025, its 12-metre-diameter antenna was completely deployed. This critical achievement marks the near completion of the early orbit phase. Over the coming days, ESA’s mission control will finalize system checks so that Biomass can transition into a six-month commissioning phase during which its instruments will be fine-tuned for optimal scientific performance.

With each milestone, ESA’s Biomass mission brings us closer to unlocking the deep mysteries of how our forests interact with Earth’s carbon cycle, paving the way for more informed environmental policies and a better understanding of our planet’s future.