New satellite will see through clouds to ‘weigh’ Earth’s forests

The first satellite of its kind scheduled to be launched on Tuesday will be able to see clouds and paper tongue to assess how to protect the world’s rainforests from climate change.

The satellite will “weigh” the biological mass, from the European Space Agency, the Earth’s forests, and reveal the amount of carbon that increases the planets that are stored inside the trees, and thus are kept outside the atmosphere.

To date, it was impossible to calculate the amount of carbon stored by 1.5 trillion tree in the planet’s rainforest forests.

The project is led by the European Airospace Group collection. The project hopes to help scientists more accurately to formulate climate change and track forest removal rates.

The satellite is to be launched At 10:15 GMT from Coro Station at ESA in French Guyana.

It has been called the “Space Broolly” affection of a giant 12 -meter in diameter that expands abroad.

The radar antenna will use a very long wavelength – allowing it to see the deepest forests inside the forests and detect branches and trunks blocked by the canopy.

“Most of the radars we have in space today take great pictures of the iceberg mountains, but when they look at the forests, they see the tops of the forest, small branches, and small leaves, do not penetrate in the forests,” explained by Dr. Ralph Kurdi, head of Earth Sciences in Airbus.

“But what we found is that using a much longer wavelength length, we can see in the depths of trees and forests,” he said.

The satellite will use 1.2 tuna an approach that is not different from those used in a CT scan, and the analysis of slides through trees on passes to build a picture of the amount of wood material.

This is the substance that can be used as a substitute for the amount of carbon dioxide that aims for the stored planet.

Professor Matt Disney, a remote sensing professor at the University of London, said that scientists are currently establishing individual trees and trying to induce, but this represents a “great challenge.”

“Our current understanding is really incomplete, because it is really difficult to measure it,” he said. “Basically, what we are talking about is to try to weigh the amount of carbon that is stored in one and a half trillion tree across the tropical areas.

“Industrial satellites are really the only way you can do it.”

On Earth, measurements will continue after the satellite will continue to check the data you send.

Despite the test years, the launch will not be clear.

“Some things on the satellite are large, which includes its 12 -meter air, it is somewhat similar to spreading an umbrella in space, only very large, so we will search for this to happen smoothly.”

Airbus brought engineers from the American L3Harris Technologies to their site in Stepheng to oversee the construction of the antenna.

L3HARRIS specializes in these large -scattered large systems – the experience that is currently not currently in Europe.

If the launch succeeds, the team hopes to produce the first maps within six months, and then will continue to collect data during the next five years.

These annual maps will not only show the amount of carbon stored, but the amount of what is lost by removing the forests.

“The type of observations we have had 50 years ago [other] Satellite, such as Landsat, is severely affected by clouds. In tropical areas, we have clouds often, so you may not see part of the tropical forests, “said Professor Disney.

Another feature of the longest wavelength of the box’s satellites in the biomass is that it can penetrate the clouds that give a consistent and similar vision of the forest from year to year.

It is the result that motivated the scientists who worked on the project for more than 20 years.

“It is exciting, because it will tell us how to take something that we may consider as a foreigner,” said Dr. Kordi. “Our forests, our trees, and how they contribute to the operations that govern our planet, in particular, the operations behind climate change, which are very important to us today and the future.”