MethaneSAT

MethaneSAT [Ball Aerospace]

MethaneSAT is a planned earth observation mission by MethaneSAT LLC, an affiliate of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), to measure methane pollution from oil and gas facilities worldwide with both broad scope and exacting precision.

The satellite will provide global, high-resolution coverage of methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. It can measure surface-level methane emissions from other major sources of human-caused methane emissions, too. The 200-plus kilometer satellite view path is large enough not only to quantify known sources, but also to discover and quantify previously unknown sources.

It’s designed to measure regions at intervals under seven days, regularly monitoring roughly 50 major regions accounting for more than 80 percent of global oil and gas production. With its moderately high spatial resolution and very high precision, MethaneSAT will have the capacity to detect lower emission sources while being able to attribute the source of those emissions at scales relevant to oil and gas infrastructure.

MethaneSAT's instrument is beeing built by Ball Aerospace, which also acts as the prime contractor. The spacecraft is provided by Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) and is based on their X-SAT Microsat bus. The 350 kg satellite will be launched in a shared launch in 2022 on a Falcon-9 v1.2 (Block 5).