{"id":57991,"date":"2025-07-03T14:41:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T14:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/jeff-bezos-backed-88m-methane-satellite-missing-in-space\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T14:41:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T14:41:39","slug":"jeff-bezos-backed-88m-methane-satellite-missing-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/jeff-bezos-backed-88m-methane-satellite-missing-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos-backed $88m methane satellite missing in space"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Esme Stallard<\/span><\/p>\n

Climate and science reporter, BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"KarolKarol Serewis\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas produced from oil and gas production, farming and landfill<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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An $88m (\u00a365m) satellite designed to detect releases of the planet-warming gas methane from oil and gas production, has been lost in space in a major setback for climate efforts. <\/p>\n

The MethaneSat satellite which had backing from Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, was launched only last year aboard an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket.<\/p>\n

It was meant to collect data for five years on sources of the powerful greenhouse gas, which is responsible for nearly a third of human-induced warming, to help curtail the worst offenders.<\/p>\n

The Environment Defense Fund, the NGO which oversees the satellite, said that communication was lost ten days ago and is currently undertaking an investigation into what happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Methane is the most potent of the greenhouse gases, and although it does not hang around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it is 28 times stronger over a 100-year period.<\/p>\n

Despite an international commitment to reduce methane levels by 30% by 2030, year-on-year it continues to rise with the target unlikely to be met, according to the European Space Agency. <\/a><\/p>\n

The main sources of methane are from oil and gas production, farming and food decomposition in landfill.<\/p>\n

But many of the current satellites that monitor it are operated privately, reducing reducing transparency of who the worst offenders for methane release are.<\/p>\n

MethaneSat came after years of development by the NGO Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and once launched made much of its data publicly available, allowing scrutiny by governments and scientists.<\/p>\n

It was backed by a consortium of tech giants including Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, which together contributed $88m to the project.<\/p>\n

The instruments used by the satellite are some of the most sensitive in the world, able to pick up much smaller sources of methane as well as “super-emitters”.<\/p>\n

Improving the sensitivity is important for detecting releases from agriculture which are often much more diffuse than from oil and gas production. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘Likely not recoverable’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Google said when it was launched it hoped its project would “fill gaps between existing tools”.<\/p>\n

The company was using its artificial intelligence tools to process the data and generate a global methane map.<\/p>\n

But after just a year in orbit, in what was meant to be a five-year programme, communication was lost with MethaneSat.<\/p>\n

The team at EDF suspect that the satellite has lost power and said in a statement “that it is likely not recoverable.”<\/p>\n

It went on to say that some of the software could be re-used but said it was too early to comment on whether a new satellite would be launched.<\/p>\n

“To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology and advocacy,” it added.<\/p>\n

One of the other major publicly-available sources of methane data is hosted by CarbonMapper. One of its sources of data is the TROPOMI instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite. Although it continues to send back data its seven-year programme was meant to finish in October. <\/p>\n

It is unclear how much longer it can continue to collect information, further limiting global efforts to track the greenhouse gas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Esme Stallard Climate and science reporter, BBC News Karol Serewis\/Getty Images Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas produced from oil and gas production, farming and landfill An $88m (\u00a365m) satellite designed to detect releases of the planet-warming gas methane from oil and gas production, has been lost in space in a major setback for climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[17726,17725,3354,12104,1208,2950,529],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57993,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991\/revisions\/57993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}