After its first year in orbit, ESA’s Biomass satellite is offering new views of Earth’s vegetation cover. Launched in April 2025, the satellite — one of the European Space Agency’s Earth Explorer missions — has been busily mapping forests and other vegetation, with the primary aim of determining the extent of stored carbon and how it changes globally with time. The spacecraft is equipped with a fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar and 12m-wide mesh antenna, used for interferometric imaging. The radar’s 70cm wavelength is optimised for penetrating forest canopies and measuring ‘biomass,’ the woody trunks, branches and stems where trees store most of their carbon. “With Biomass, we are poised to gain vital new data on how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests, helping to fill key gaps in our knowledge of the carbon cycle and, ultimately, Earth’s climate system,” said ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli.