Background and Mission Objectives The European Space Agency’s Biomass mission is a groundbreaking Earth observation program focused on measuring the amount of carbon stored in the world’s forests. Selected in 2013 as ESA’s seventh Earth Explorer research mission, Biomass was conceived to address a critical gap in our understanding of the global carbon cycle en.wikipedia.org…
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A New Radar Eye for Forest Carbon The European Space Agency’s Biomass satellite, launched on April 29, 2025, is a groundbreaking mission designed to map the world’s forests in 3D and measure their carbon content with unprecedented accuracy defensetalks.com airbus.com. It is the first satellite ever to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar – a…
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1. Why today’s flight matters At 02:31 EDT (08:31 CEST) a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon christened Grace roared off pad 39A, carrying four astronauts on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4)—and with them the dreams of three nations returning to human space-flight after more than four decades. Among the passengers is Dr Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, who just became…
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A shallow, 2.7‑magnitude earthquake jolted Sherman Oaks at lunchtime on 24 June 2025, startling thousands of Angelenos and instantly reigniting the perennial question: Are we ready for the Big One? Drawing on U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data, real‑time local reporting, and commentary from leading seismologists, this deep dive unpacks what actually happened beneath the Valley floor, what scientists know (and…
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A burst of high‑speed solar wind from a giant coronal‑hole on the Sun is slamming Earth’s magnetic field this week, prompting NOAA to issue a G2‑level geomagnetic‑storm watch and raising the odds that the aurora borealis will spill far beyond its usual haunts—potentially as far south as Illinois, Ohio and New York on the night of 24–25 June 2025.…
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The European Space Agency’s new BIOMASS mission has started to deliver on its dramatic promise: a 12‑metre, umbrella‑shaped radar antenna that peers through dense jungle canopies has sent back its first colour‑coded maps of the Amazon, Indonesia and even the bedrock of the Sahara—offering an unprecedented view of how much carbon the world’s forests really…
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Microwave radiometry is a passive remote sensing technique that measures naturally emitted thermal radiation in the microwave portion (0.3–300 GHz) of the electromagnetic spectrum. In essence, a microwave radiometer detects weak microwave energy from Earth’s surface and atmosphere and expresses it as a brightness temperature, the equivalent blackbody temperature of the emitting source. Unlike optical…
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In a world warming faster than ever, the planet’s frozen extremes are undergoing dramatic change – and two ingenious satellites are on the front lines of discovery. NASA’s ICESat-2 and ESA’s CryoSat-2 use cutting-edge laser and radar technology, respectively, to map our planet’s ice in unprecedented detail from space. These twin missions have revolutionized how…
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Studying the vast oceans from the deck of a ship or a buoy has always been a daunting challenge. Today, fleets of Earth-observing satellites serve as an “eye in the sky” for oceanographers, providing a continuous, planet-wide view of the seas. Unlike traditional ship-based methods that can only cover limited regions at a time, satellites…
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A cascade of newly released commercial‑satellite photographs confirms that last weekend’s U.S. bunker‑buster raid on Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant gouged fresh holes into the mountain and triggered a landslide of rock and debris that experts say may have entombed the centrifuge halls. The imagery—captured by Maxar, Planet Labs and others—has become the centerpiece of a…
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