Starion Group was delighted to witness the successful launch of Biomass, a new Earth Explorer mission from the European Space Agency (ESA) designed to capture vital information about our forests. Space engineering experts from Starion have been supporting ESA in the design and development of the mission, and will continue to provide support through the commissioning phase. In addition, Starion’s MOIS tool suite is being used at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, in support of mission operations.
Today, ESA’s Biomass spacecraft was successfully launched on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The mission will be the first to observe Earth using a P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument, which will enable it to capture unique information about our forests. This will help us to better understand Earth’s changing forests and broaden our knowledge about their role in the carbon cycle. It will also support monitoring of deforestation.
Starion’s space engineers have been contributing to the development of Biomass for many years, including payload data ground segment (PDGS) activities.
Starion’s support for Biomass
Among the Starion engineers working on Biomass is Michele Caccia, who has been involved in the mission for the past 6 years as a PDGS Engineer, based at ESA’s Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN) in Frascati, Italy.
“I have supported ESA with many activities for the Biomass mission, mostly related to data production. This has involved the support to the design and development of software that will process the instrument raw data up to level 1, which is data that can be passed on to users. I’ve also been supporting the design of the operational processing data flow of the PDGS.”
Starion Ground System Engineer Jean Pierre Batoullet also contributed to the ground segment aspects of Biomass by providing support to the design and execution of testing activities between the flight operation segment at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre ESOC and the PDGS in ESRIN.
Starion also has three Space Operations Engineers supporting Biomass at ESOC. Working alongside other engineers as part of the Biomass flight control team are Starion’s Denis Di Filippantonio, Alessandro Latino and Matteo Ruaro. They supported all the pre-flight operations activities before the launch, and are continuing to do so during the critical launch and early operations phase (LEOP) and the deployment of the main instrument, making sure in that critical timeframe, everything is going smoothly.
Matteo Ruaro explains: “I contribute to ESA’s Earth Explorer missions including EarthCARE and, more recently, Biomass. In short, I monitor and control satellites to ensure they function correctly in space. For Biomass, I’m part of a small overnight team of three people responsible for monitoring and controlling the spacecraft in its first days in orbit. Then, along with Denis and Alessandro, who are part of the morning and afternoon teams during LEOP, I’ll be supporting Biomass through the commissioning phase and during routine operations.”
About Biomass
Biomass is the seventh of ESA’s Earth Explorer missions. These are pioneering science research missions that are expanding our knowledge of aspects such as climate change, ice, wind and clouds, and our planet’s magnetic and gravity fields.
The spacecraft has a striking design, with a 12-metre, umbrella-shaped antenna. This is required for the SAR payload, which will operate in the long-wave P-band frequency range, with a wavelength of 70cm. It’s more common for satellite SAR instruments to operate in the shorter wavelength C-, L- and X-bands, which interact with the outer layers of the forest, such as leaves and small branches. In contrast, Biomass’s longer wavelength P-band signals will penetrate deep within the forest canopy to detect large branches and tree trunks, enabling it to measure above ground biomass and tree heights across multiple types of forest.
Biomass will emit radiation at different polarisations, angles and time points. These varied remote sensing techniques will let it distinguish between features on the ground, precisely estimate the heights of trees and terrain, and generate 3D models of areas of interest.
Michele notes that the use of P-band SAR presented significant challenges for the PDGS team. “The other bands, such as C-band, have been used in space missions for a long time and handling the data is well understood. But in this case, there are elements that are unknown because no other spacecraft has ever flown with a P-band instrument before. A lot of algorithms to compensate for aspects such as ionosphere and radio frequency effects have been developed, but we will only know how much calibration is required when Biomass starts sending observational data.”
Future support
Michele and his Starion colleagues, including Riccardo Ricelli, another Biomass PDGS Engineer, and Fabio Frate, IVV and Operational Support Engineer, will continue to work on Biomass during the 6-month commissioning period.
Michele Caccia added: “I am extremely happy that everything around the launch happened correctly! I feel part of this success and I’m really pleased with what we achieved. Now that the first signals have been received from Biomass, I’m looking forward to seeing the data and all the new information that Biomass will reveal about our forests during its lifetime.”
Find out more
Read more about why Biomass and other ESA satellites are so important in our article: “Space – Helping to Protect Our Forests”
Main image: credit ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin
