Green light for the launch of Biomass, the European forest satellite

All set for the launch of Biomass , the new satellite of the European Space Agency designed to verify the health of forests around the world and calculate the amount of carbon they contain. The launch is scheduled for April 29 at 11:15 Italian time with the Vega C rocket from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. "The operations to prepare for the launch are proceeding regularly ," Antonio Pizzicaroli, head of the Integration Operations Directorate of Avio, the Italian company that makes the European Vega rocket, told ANSA. "The weather forecast is also good , but - he added - we will have the latest indications with the launch of some sounding balloons only during the course of the day." The launch, called VV26 , will be the fourth with Vega C , the new version of the Vega rocket with a greater quantity of cargo at the same cost, which will have to carry its cargo into an orbit at an altitude of 666 kilometers. From there, the Biomass atellite, thanks to an innovative radar never used before in space, will create a sort of ultrasound of all the green areas of the world. It is estimated that every year woods and forests absorb about 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but there are no precise measurements of the quantity of carbon present in the entire planet, a figure that Biomass will now be able to obtain. The data from this mission are fundamental to understanding global phenomena with greater precision, in particular the evolution of the climate . The project was carried out under the industrial guidance of Airbus, which involved dozens of European companies including the contributions of Leonardo and its joint ventures Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space.