Satellite Mission for Pollution-Tracking in Space

A satellite worth $88 million (about £65 million), built to find and track methane gas leaks from oil and gas activities, has been lost in space. This is a big setback for efforts to fight climate change.

The satellite, called MethaneSat, was supported by companies like Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos. It was sent into space last year using a rocket from Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX.

MethaneSat had an important job. It was supposed to orbit Earth for the next five years and gather information on where methane was being released. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Even though it doesn’t stay in the air as long as carbon dioxide, it traps heat much more effectively—about 28 times stronger over a 100-year period. This makes it one of the main causes of global warming, and stopping big leaks is important for slowing down climate change.

The satellite was managed by an environmental group called the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). About ten days ago, they said they lost contact with the satellite, and now they are investigating what went wrong. At the moment, they don’t know if the satellite is damaged, lost in space, or just unable to send signals back to Earth.

If MethaneSat cannot be recovered, it will be a serious loss for climate research. The satellite was expected to give scientists and governments valuable data to hold major polluters accountable and push for cleaner practices in the oil and gas industry.

Even though this is disappointing news, the team is still trying to figure out what happened and whether they can fix the problem. If not, climate experts may have to wait longer for another satellite to do this important job.Despite an international commitment to reduce methane levels by 30% by 2030, year-on-year it continues to rise with the target unlikely to be met, according to the European Space Agency.

The main sources of methane are from oil and gas production, farming and food decomposition in landfill.

But many of the current satellites that monitor it are operated privately, reducing transparency of who the worst offenders for methane release are.

MethaneSat came after years of development by the NGO Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and once launched made much of its data publicly available, allowing scrutiny by governments and scientists.

It was backed by a consortium of tech giants including Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, which together contributed $88m to the project.

The instruments used by the satellite are some of the most sensitive in the world, able to pick up much smaller sources of methane as well as "super-emitters".

Improving the sensitivity is important for detecting releases from agriculture which are often much more diffuse than from oil and gas production.

'Likely not recoverable'

Google said when it was launched it hoped its project would "fill gaps between existing tools".

The company was using its artificial intelligence tools to process the data and generate a global methane map.

But after just a year in orbit, in what was meant to be a five-year programme, communication was lost with MethaneSat.

The team at EDF suspect that the satellite has lost power and said in a statement "that it is likely not recoverable."

It went on to say that some of the software could be re-used but said it was too early to comment on whether a new satellite would be launched.

"To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology and advocacy," it added.

One of the other major publicly-available sources of methane data is hosted by CarbonMapper. One of its sources of data is the TROPOMI instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Sentinel-5P satellite. Although it continues to send back data its seven-year programme was meant to finish in October.

It is unclear how much longer it can continue to collect information, further limiting global efforts to track the greenhouse gas.