Photo courtesy of NASA via Stanford News.
A satellite orbiting Earth collects data from space.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Science and Environment Editor
Move over, carbon dioxide; this satellite project is targeting methane emissions as the chief culprit of global warming.
With the satellite project, MethaneSAT, in partnership between the Environmental Defense Fund and Google, methane emissions will no longer be able to slip through the cracks; precise tracking and imaging will point an incriminating magnifying glass on some of the most egregious methane gas producers, a blog post on Google’s The Keyword reported.
According to the blog, MethaneSAT is set to launch in early March on a SpaceX rocket, where it will then orbit Earth, collecting data from space.
With the help of Google’s AI and infrastructure mapping technology, the satellite will detect physical oil and gas infrastructure and “trace methane emissions to their source” the same way that Google Maps detects “sidewalks, street signs and road names.” Combined with EDF’s data, the satellite can pinpoint the exact place and machinery from which the leaks are coming. With this data, the mission is anticipated to initiate a “new era of global climate accountability,” Business Insider reported.
Mount Holyoke College Visiting Lecturer in Astronomy Thomas Burbine, told Mount Holyoke News that satellites collect data using a detector that measures “the intensity of light.”
Burbine explained that since MethaneSAT is going to be "pointing at the earth, and methane has specific light absorption bands where it's absorbing light . . . by the intensity of the absorption bands, you can pretty much say [if] there [is] more methane in the atmosphere in a particular place than other places.”
Kyle Broaders is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Co-chair of the Biochemistry Program at Mount Holyoke College.
“[M]ethane is a colorless, odorless flammable gas [that] has the same behavior in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), absorbing infrared light and trapping heat in the atmosphere,” Broaders explained in an email to MHN. “[M]ethane is the primary component of natural gas, and there are inevitable leaks in the process of natural gas production, processing, distribution and use. All of those losses go into the atmosphere.”
Burbine further explained that methane is not very stable in the atmosphere. “[Methane] breaks down very easily. So if you constantly replenish it, the problem is, it's a greenhouse gas, and the greenhouse gas causes the Earth’s surface to heat up because the infrared light can't get out,” he said.
The International Energy Agency measures the impact of greenhouse gasses based on how long they remain in the atmosphere and their ability to absorb energy. While methane remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter period than carbon dioxide, it absorbs far more energy in that time.
Cutting methane emissions is, therefore, seen as one of the fastest and most efficient ways to combat climate change. According to Business Insider, methane “has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a decade.”
The IEA reported that methane emissions from the energy sector cause roughly 30% of the rise in global temperatures, which are released in the extraction of fossil fuels. According to Business Insider oil, gas and coal projects are estimated to be responsible for 40% of all global methane emissions.
Broaders also listed other major sources of “anthropogenic methane” — human-produced methane — as “livestock farming, rice cultivation and organic matter breakdown in landfills,” with wetlands as a “major natural source of methane.”
Past methods of mapping methane consisted of complex field studies using airplanes and handheld infrared cameras, but this research takes a long time to accumulate and “offers only a snapshot in time,” Business Insider explained. With a global view of emissions from space via a satellite, these challenges are expected to become vestiges of the past.
According to Burbine, “I’m sure there’s methane detectors on the Earth,” but with a satellite of this caliber, “you'll be able to cover the whole Earth in the matter of whatever time. So you can observe everything on the Earth. . . . And sooner or later, if it's in the right orbit . . . you can image the whole Earth to first order.”
The importance of this mission is underscored by Broaders’ statement that “methane is a major contributor to global warming. Being able to identify and quantify where it is being released into the atmosphere is an important first step toward reducing emissions.”
According to Business Insider, the project comes as a promising response to the recent COP28 conference in Dubai, during which many nations made the historical decision to commit to transitioning away from fossil fuels. During the climate summit, companies responsible for 40% of oil and gas production pledged to “nearly eliminate” their emissions this decade.
This step towards fossil fuel eradication is exactly what the satellite plans to provide, as its trackings will be made available to the public later this year on MethaneSAT’s website and Google Earth Engine, Google’s “planetary-scale environmental monitoring platform.”
With this information publicly available and methane tracked on a global scale, energy companies, researchers and average citizens are expected to have the tools to better understand and limit emissions from fossil fuel projects more efficiently than ever before.