Just after 2pm on a clear afternoon on March 4 at a Space Force Base in California, history was made when a Falcon-9 rocket launched a washing machine-sized device into space, the world’s first intelligence satellite run by an environmental group.
It is effectively the world’s first environmental spy satellite, and its mission is to track methane emissions to their source and monitor global efforts to reduce the invisible and odorless planet warming gas. When it is burnt it creates less warming emissions than energy sources like coal, so it has long been seen as a clean alternative to other fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, more tools and projects are being deployed to detect methane, including a major program led by the United Nations that is collecting, integrating, and reconciling methane data from different sources. But he said ground and airborne measurements still needed to be conducted in Australia to ensure the data swept up by MethaneSAT was accurate once it started being provided.