The launch
The Biomass satellite will be launched in 2024 on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Vega joined the family of launch vehicles at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2012. It has demonstrated impressive capabilities ranging from equatorial to Sun-synchronous orbits, from orbital to suborbital missions, from single to multiple payloads.
Unlike most small rockets, Vega is able to lift payloads ranging from a single satellite up to one main satellite plus additional small satellites and place them into separate orbits on a single mission. This has made reaching space cheaper, quicker and easier.
With a height of 30 m and a diameter of 3 m, the launcher can place 300–1500 kg satellites into the polar and low-Earth orbits used for many scientific and Earth observation missions. Vega was used to launch the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite in 2015, Copernicus Sentinel-2B in 207 and ESA’s Earth observation Aeolus wind mission in 2018 and the FSSCat/ɸ-sat-1 mission in 2020.
In orbit, Biomass will be operated from ESA’s European Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Germany.
