The Biomass mission started. In the Engineering Team Poles

Biomass is one of the mission of the European Comic Agency (ESA), whose main contractor is Airbus Defense and Space, as part of the Earth Explorer program – the Polish company GMV said, whose team took part in the mission planning process and develops software enabling the processing of data transferred to Earth by research apparatus of Biomass satellites. As stated, the goal of the Earth Explorer program is to provide data to a better understanding of processes taking place on Earth. “This is the first such satellite that uses the radar working in the P. band enables penetration through the dense layers of tropical trees, which allows you to generate three -dimensional forest biomass maps” – we read in a press release.

The task of the Biomass mission is to provide key information about the state of forests and the changes taking place in them, as well as to deepen our knowledge about the role that forests play in the process of coal circulation in nature. The collected data of global forest biomass estimates is to serve, among others for a better understanding of the dynamics of coal circulation in nature and monitoring changes taking place in these ecosystems. The mission will last five years, and the satellite will operate in a synchronous orbit with the sun at an altitude of about 666 km.

The Polish GMV branch has been participating in the work on the Biomass mission since 2014, dealing with the analysis of the mission, i.e. planning how the satellite should move in orbit to collect useful data – it was informed. As part of this task, calculations were made, among others optimal flight trajectory for each of the mission phases, necessary maneuvers to ensure the correct completion of the assumptions of the mission and time of surgery, taking into account the demand for energy. As reported in the information, GMV in Poland has also prepared key components of the data processing system, so -called wounded processors. They allow you to exchange “raw” data transmitted by the satellite into data useful to scientists. The first of them, the L0 processor, implements preliminary processing, sanitization and organization of raw data sent from the satellite. The second, Orbit and Attitude Processor, processes information on the location and orientation of the satellite, necessary at a later stage of calibration of scientific data. Both processors are part of the ground data processing segment (Payload Data Ground Segment). In addition, the information reads that the data obtained as part of the mission will be open and will be made available to the scientific community around the world.