APOGEE STAFF
You can see how humans fuel climate change in the spread of drought and wildfire, the rise of sea levels and the melting of glaciers. Thanks to a growing network of orbital sensors, you can also see the source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to the crisis.
Three microsatellites launched in November 2023 for the Canadian company GHGSAT are among the most sophisticated. They joined a fleet of GHGSAT censors, each the size and shape of a microwave oven, that can locate the source of methane emissions to within less than 25 square meters. Before GHGSAT, location could only be determined within a range of kilometers based on earlier satellites and aircraft and ground-level monitoring. Among sites where GHGSAT measures greenhouse gas emissions are oil wells, landfills, mines and hydroelectric dams. One of the new satellites, dubbed Vanguard, is the first to pinpoint carbon dioxide emissions from individual industrial facilities, GHGSAT said. Carbon dioxide and methane are main contributors to climate change. The three new satellites joined six already placed in orbit by the for-profit GHGSAT, employing patented processes that use sensitive spectrometers and a technique known as interferometry — merging multiple sources of light to find a pattern. The company has partnered with the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies.

As reported in the January 2022 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, other satellites that measure methane include Sentinel 5-P from the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2017; the Italian Space Agency’s PRISMA, launched in 2019; and MethaneSAT, launched in March 2024 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 10 rideshare mission and developed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund with Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The mission is being controlled from New Zealand, which is helping fund MethaneSAT. New Zealand’s first space science mission, the MethaneSAT spacecraft is equipped with a high-performance spectrometer methane-sensing system to allow the satellite to take high-resolution measurements of global methane emissions from roughly 50 major regions across Earth.
Background
GHGSAT started developing its constellation in response to carbon-reduction measures implemented by some Canadian provinces and U.S. states, according to the ESA. The company plans a constellation of satellites, named after the children of employees. Claire was first, in 2016, and the most recent include Juba and Elliot. GHGSAT said at the time of the November 2023 launch that it makes over 2 million site measurements per year, on and offshore, and provides data to NASA, ESA and the United Nations. The company aims to become the global standard for emissions measurement.
Deployment
A reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted Vanguard, Jubal and Elliot into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the morning of November 11, 2023. They were part of a mass-deployment of 90 payloads aboard the SpaceX rideshare mission known as Transporter 9. As the Earth rotates west to east below it, the GHGSAT constellation orbits about 500 kilometers above the planet on a roughly pole-to-pole path, several times each day. This enables measurement of any source on the Earth’s surface within a matter of days.
Notable finds
After it was identified by GHGSAT during a scientific mission, a malfunctioning oil well in Turkmenistan was determined to have released 142,000 tons of methane from February 2018 to January 2019 — the carbon-footprint equivalent of 1 million cars. This find, the first time a methane release was detected from space, was heralded as a breakthrough in helping stanch greenhouse gas pollution. In January 2022, GHGSAT detected the release of nearly 90 tons of methane an hour from the Raspadskaya mine in Russia’s Siberia region, scene of an explosion and collapse that killed 66 workers in May 2010. GHGSAT alerted the mine’s operators to this “ultra emissions” event, the largest ever attributed to a single site. In January and February 2022, GHGSAT detected methane emissions from open pit coal mines for the first time, including a mine in Kazakhstan generating 54,000 kilograms of the gas per hour.
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Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund: “Until now, we’ve gotten snapshots. We are going to soon have a motion picture with a high degree of clarity of what’s being emitted and where it’s being emitted. That’s a game-changer.”