Methane-Tracking Satellite
Is Lost, in a Blow to Climate Efforts
The spacecraft, MethaneSAT,
was just a year into its mission to provide a clearer picture of planet-warming
emissions from oil and gas sites.
Last
year, a nonprofit environmental group launched a new satellite to measure methane
emissions from oil and gas sites worldwide, in a bid to expand our understanding
of global warming and what’s driving it.
The
data from the satellite would give governments and the public fresh insight into
where this planet-heating gas was coming from and who was responsible for it.
For
nearly two weeks, however, the mission’s controllers have been unable to get in
contact with the satellite. It has lost power, they said, and most likely cannot
be recovered. The cause is being investigated.
In
its short time in orbit, the satellite, named MethaneSAT,
collected “magnificent” data, said Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental
Defense Fund, the nonprofit that led the project. He and
other researchers will continue processing the measurements it beamed back before
its untimely demise.
MethaneSAT had an expected life of five years. It ended
up collecting a little under a year’s worth of data in all, Dr. Hamburg said.
The
project’s key accomplishment, he said, was showing that a satellite could pinpoint
emissions at a global scale. Until recently, identifying major emitters was largely
done with airplanes, drones or equipment on the ground.
“We
set out in this first year to demonstrate what was possible, that we could think
about direct measurement of greenhouse gases in a way that we had never been able
to do before,” Dr. Hamburg said. “And I think we demonstrated that.”
Methane,
the main component of natural gas, is burned worldwide in power plants and factories,
as well as in gas stoves in homes. But the gas is leaky: Large amounts of it escape
unburned from pipelines and drill sites. Methane is also released into the air from
wetlands, landfills and feedlots for livestock.
In
the atmosphere, all this gas absorbs and re-emits heat from Earth’s surface with
high efficiency. This causes heat to remain trapped near the Earth, raising
global temperatures. All told, methane is the second-biggest contributor to global
warming after carbon dioxide.
NASA
and other government agencies monitor methane concentrations from space, as do private
companies. Still, MethaneSAT filled a gap. Circling the
planet 15 times a day, from 360 miles above, it tracked methane over large areas
but with enough precision to identify specific facilities and oil wells.
The
$88 million project was supported by the New Zealand Space Agency and other partners.
It was financed by donors including the Bezos Earth Fund, the climate- and nature-focused
charity started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
By
June, the MethaneSAT team had worked out how to process
the data from the satellite quickly and automatically, and had begun releasing batches
of images every two weeks. Their early measurements suggested that emissions from
oil- and gas-producing basins in North America and Central Asia were much higher
than previously estimated.
But
on June 20, the team lost contact.
The
satellite had been swinging over the Pacific Ocean when communications stopped,
Dr. Hamburg said. Engineers tried various things to re-establish a connection but
didn’t succeed.
Compared
with MethaneSAT, spacecraft for larger missions are typically
built with more redundancy to protect against failure, Dr. Hamburg said. “But that
obviously adds a lot of cost,” he said.
It’s
too early to say whether the Environmental Defense Fund
will build a replacement satellite, Dr. Hamburg said. Even so, the organization
remains committed to providing information that will help governments and companies
curb methane emissions, he said.