The Biomass mission is the 7th Earth Explorer Mission within the frame of the ESA Earth Observation Programme. The primary objective of Biomass is to determine the worldwide distribution of forest above-ground biomass in order to reduce the major uncertainties in calculations of carbon stocks and fluxes associated with the terrestrial biosphere. To meet these objectives Biomass will carry, for the first time in space, a fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) supporting also interferometric acquisitions. This paper provides an overview of the Biomass system design and development status.

Biomass, ESA's 7th Earth Explorer mission, will provide the first global scale, systematic measurements of the global distribution of biomass. This paper describes the Biomass instrument, an imaging synthetic aperture radar (SAR) at P-band. It provides an overview of the mission application and architecture, the instrument requiremnts and technical concept, and the predicted instrument performance.

BIOMASS mission [1] was selected as the 7th Earth Explorer Mission within the frame of the ESA Earth Observation Envelope Programme. Being the BIOMASS instrument a P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and being that frequency bandwidth already in use by different services, the BIOMASS acquisitions are expected to be occasionally affected by Radio Frequency Interference (RFI). In the framework of a comprehensive strategy for the BIOMASS mission to cope with the interference signals, in addition to design choices at both mission and instrument level, in this paper it is presented a study aimed at verifying the feasibility of an on-ground processing approach to mitigate the quality degradation on BIOMASS Level1 data due to RFI.

Earth Explorers are the backbone of the science and research element of European Space Agency (ESA)'s Living Planet Programme, providing an important contribution to the understanding of the Earth system. Following the User Consultation Meeting held in Graz, Austria on 5-6 March 2013, the ESA Program Board has decided implementing Biomass as the 7thEarth Explorer Mission within the frame of the ESA Earth Observation Envelope Programme. This paper will give an overview of the satellite system and its payload. The system technical description presented here is based on the results of the work performed during parallel Phase A system studies by two industrial consortia led by Airbus Space and Defence Ltd. and Thales Alenia Space Italy. Two implementation concepts (respectively A and B) are described and provide viable options capable of meeting the mission requirements.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing candidates for the next Earth Explorer Core mission with the aim to select the 7thmission to be launched. Earth Explorers are the backbone of the science and research element of ESA's Living Planet Programme, providing an important contribution to the global endeavour of understanding the Earth system. Six candidate missions were originally selected and investigated in preliminary studies (Phase 0). A down-selection was made after a User Consultation Meeting in January 2009. Three of the candidate missions (Biomass, CoReH2O and PREMIER) were retained for more detailed feasibility investigations (Phase A). Each mission has been prepared through two parallel and competing industrial studies and many complementary science and technology activities. The final down-selection will be in 2013, followed by implementation and planned launch in 2019. This paper gives an overview of the CoReH2O requirements, mission concept and profile, satellite, payload, and status of the mission.

The European Space Agency (ESA) released a Call for Proposals for the next Earth Explorer Core Mission in March 2005, with the aim to select the 7thEarth Explorer (EE-7) mission for launch in the next decade. Twenty-four proposals were received and subject to scientific and technical assessment. Six candidate missions were selected and further investigated in the preliminary feasibility studies (Phase 0). A further down-selection was made after the User Consultation Meeting held in Lisbon, Portugal in January 2009. Three candidate missions were selected for further feasibility investigations (phase A). Each of the candidate missions is now being defined in detail through two parallel and competing industrial studies and many complementary science and technology studies, aiming to the final down-selection in 2011/12, followed by the mission implementation with a planned launch in the 2016/17 timeframe.

In the frame of the BIOMASS mission promoted by ESA for evaluating and monitoring Earth biomass, the expected performance of a P-band SAR instrument based on very large Direct Radiating Array antenna is addressed, as well as its architecture and the accommodation challenge on a platform.

Snow is a critical component of the global water cycle and climate system, and a major source of water supply in many parts of the world. There is a lack of spatially distributed information on the accumulation of snow on land surfaces, glaciers, lake ice, and sea ice. Satellite missions for systematic and global snow observations will be essential to improve the representation of the cryosphere in climate models and to advance the knowledge and prediction of the water cycle variability and changes that depend on snow and ice resources. This paper describes the scientific drivers and technical approach of the proposed Cold Regions Hydrology High-Resolution Observatory (CoReH2O) satellite mission for snow and cold land processes. The sensor is a synthetic aperture radar operating at 17.2 and 9.6 GHz, VV and VH polarizations. The dual-frequency and dual-polarization design enables the decomposition of the scattering signal for retrieving snow mass and other physical properties of snow and ice.

A new call for Core Earth Explorer Ideas was released by the European Space Agency in March 2005. The Call focused on the global carbon and water cycles, atmospheric chemistry and climate, as well as the human element as a cross cutting issue. The proposals were peer reviewed by scientific panels, and also appraised technically and programmatically by ESA. This paper describes the Earth Explorer cycle and gives an overview of the six candidate missions selected for assessment studies.

The SRAL SAR radar altimeter is the core instrument of the topography mission carried on board the Sentinel-3 satellite which is planned to be launched in 2012. A detailed overview of this instrument is given in this paper in terms of architecture, functions, modes and performances.

Airborne radio echo sounding of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet over Pine Island Glacier was performed in the austral summer of 2004/2005 under the National Science Foundation's West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative. The British Antarctic Survey flew its newly developed 150-MHz ice-sounding radar over Pine Island Glacier and collected approximately 35 000 km of sounding data. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique was applied to process those data in order to enhance radar signatures from the bed. As a matter of fact, airborne ice-sounding radar systems are generally affected by surface clutter returns, masking the echoes of internal layers and ice-bedrock transition at a large depth. Focused and unfocused (Doppler filtering) SAR techniques were compared, and their respective advantages/disadvantages were analyzed. Enhancement of bedrock detection at a large depth (> 2000 m) through SAR processing is demonstrated. Finally, a simulation analysis was performed for assessing the feasibility of ice-sheet sounding from space. It is shown that the gain in bed detection threshold is marginal in the satellite sounding geometry. Airborne radar, Antarctica, ice sounding, satellite remote sensing, subglacial topography, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, West Antarctic Ice Sheet.