Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Operations and data flow
The Biomass satellite orbits Earth in a polar, Sun-synchronous, dawn dusk orbit at an altitude of 666 km. It flies in a drifting orbit that enables the acquisition of images in an interferometric configuration with a three-day repeat cycle. The satellite stays in this configuration to take three images of one area, after which it observes a new area. In total, takes 228 days to cover the globe.
ESA’s European Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Germany operates the Biomass satellite via the ground station in Kiruna, Sweden. The scientific data are also downlinked via X-band to the Kiruna ground station.
The Biomass Calibration Transponder at ESA’s New Norcia ground station in Western Australia is used for measuring the satellite antenna in orbit and to calibrate the system. It is a much larger transponder than has been built for other synthetic aperture radar missions.
Read more about the transponder: Radio eye on tree-counting Biomass
Once the data have been received in Kiruna they are sent to ESA’s Centre of Earth Observation, ESRIN, in Frascati, Italy, for processing and distribution to users.
For more information and data access, visit Biomass at Earth online.
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