THE MISSION
Studying the world’s tropical biomass is key to our understanding Earth’s climate. Biomass – an Earth Explorer mission – takes forest counting to a new level by using a type of instrument that has never before been flown in space: a ‘P-band’ synthetic aperture radar. In addition to studying forests, the data are expected to be used for monitoring the ionosphere, glaciers and ice sheets, and for mapping subsurface geology in deserts and surface topography below dense vegetation.
