Bezos-Backed Methane Tracking Satellite Is Lost In Space

MethaneSAT, an $88 million satellite backed by Jeff Bezos and led by the Environmental Defense Fund to track global methane emissions, has been lost in space after going off course and losing power over Norway. 'We're seeing this as a setback, not a failure,' Amy Middleton, senior vice president at EDF, told Reuters. 'We've made so much progress and so much has been learned that if we hadn't taken this risk, we wouldn't have any of these learnings.' Reuters reports: The launch of MethaneSAT in March 2024 was a milestone in a years-long campaign by EDF to hold accountable the more than 120 countries that in 2021 pledged to curb their methane emissions. It also sought to help enforce a further promise from 50 oil and gas companies made at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December 2023 to eliminate methane and routine gas flaring. While MethaneSAT was not the only project to publish satellite data on methane emissions, its backers said it provided more detail on emissions sources and it partnered with Google to create a publicly-available global map of emissions.

EDF reported the lost satellite to federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Space Force on Tuesday, it said. Building and launching the satellite cost $88 million, according to the EDF. The organization had received a $100 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020 and got other major financial support from Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation and the TED Audacious Project and EDF donors. The project was also partnered with the New Zealand Space Agency. EDF said it had insurance to cover the loss and its engineers were investigating what had happened.

The organization said it would continue to use its resources, including aircraft with methane-detecting spectrometers, to look for methane leaks. It also said it was too early to say whether it would seek to launch another satellite but believed MethaneSAT proved that a highly sensitive instrument 'could see total methane emissions, even at low levels, over wide areas.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.