A mission to map and track global pollution from methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is scheduled to launch today after years of collaboration between some of the biggest names in technology. It's called MtaneSAT, a satellite that got funding and support from Jeff Bezos, Google and SpaceX, among others.
MtaneSAT is expected to launch today from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:05 p.m. PT. The takeoff will be broadcast live on SpaceX's website and on the company's X profile. The nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund that developed MtaneSAT also promises a special program starting at 1:40 pm PT with key experts and “supporters” to talk about the mission.
Methane pollution is responsible for around 30 percent of global warming That is raising sea levels and causing more extreme weather disasters. The gas comes from the decomposition of garbage in landfills, from methane-emitting microbes in rice fields and, sadly, from cattle belching and defecating. It also commonly leaks from oil and gas fields, pipelines, and even home appliances. After all, so-called natural gas is mostly just methane.
Orbiting the Earth in 95 minutes, it will have its eyes on the oil and gas fields that account for about 80 percent of global production.
It's all that gas leaking that the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) plans to address with MtaneSAT. The group has already documented massive amounts of methane leaks. Between 2012 and 2018, it found that US methane emissions were actually 60 percent higher than Environmental Protection Agency estimates.
The group worked together with 40 research institutions and 50 companies to build a more complete picture of methane emissions. It was a painstaking job to take ground measurements directly from the pollution sources, which they complemented with aerial readings taken by airplanes.
MtaneSAT can cover much more ground much faster. According to EDF, it would take about 20 seconds to inspect the same area that would have taken a plane two hours to inspect. Orbiting the Earth in 95 minutes, it will have its eyes on the oil and gas fields that account for more than 80 percent of global production.
The goal is to quickly see how much methane is leaking and from where, so we can take steps to plug all those leaks. Methane is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels when it comes to warming the planet, but only within the first 20 years of entering the atmosphere, and then its potency declines.
Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, remains in the atmosphere and traps heat for centuries. Since methane is a powerful but relatively short-lived greenhouse gas, preventing its leak is seen as a quick way to have a significant and immediate effect on climate change.
Google announced a partnership with EDF last month to create a global map of methane pollution from oil and gas infrastructure. The company is training ai to detect well pads, pumps and storage tanks in satellite images similar to how it identifies sidewalks and traffic signs for Google Maps. Matching that infrastructure to MtaneSAT emissions data could help regulators identify where there are leaks.
If this mission is successful, it could be a game-changer by allowing policymakers to assess how much progress they are making on climate action based on real-world pollution measures rather than estimates based on companies reporting their own emissions.
“What we have learned over our decade of doing field measurements is that, in reality, when you measure actual emissions in the field, it turns out that the total magnitude of emissions coming from industry is much larger than what they report through engineering . calculations,” said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of energy transition at EDF, during a press conference on Friday.
The satellite's construction and launch cost $88 million, according to EDF. The Bezos Earth Fund awarded EDF a $100 million grant in 2020 to help get MtaneSAT off the ground, making it one of the project's largest funders. MtaneSAT also marks recognition by the New Zealand Space Agency. technology/space/space-related-opportunities-in-new-zealand/methanesat-mission/”>first government-funded space mission.
If all goes as planned, MtaneSAT should start publishing some data in early summer. A complete picture of the world's major oil and gas basins is not expected until 2025, according to EDF data will be available in MetanoSAT website and Google Earth Engine.
