From methane emissions to space weather, satellite-based observations forge ahead – Physics World

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From methane emissions to space weather, satellite-based observations forge

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That, in essence, is the story Adina Gillespie told attendees at the Appleton Space Conference, which was held last week at the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).
Gillespie is the business development manager at GHGSat, a Montreal, Canada-based start-up that made headlines in November thanks to its methane-sniffing microsatellite.
The satellite – dubbed “Claire” after the daughter of a GHGSat employee – has been operating since 2016 as testbed for space-based monitoring of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Although GHGSat is mainly interested in methane emissions from human activities such as oil and gas production, when an academic geoscientist asked if it could also look for methane-belching mud volcanoes in Central Asia, it agreed to try.
In fact, the GHGSat scientists and their collaborators calculated that, over the course of a year, the Turkmenistan site released between 108 and 176 metric kilotons of methane – equivalent to the annual output of one million cars.
Instead, she explained, GHGSat contacted the methane emitter indirectly, via diplomatic channels.
Gillespie declined to name the party responsible for emitting so much methane, explaining that, in GHGSat’s view, “the opportunity for impact comes from working collaboratively, not from policing”.
In general, though, she says she is “pushing at an open door” when she talks to oil and gas executives about using space-based monitoring to spot methane leaks.
Gillespie’s talk was one of 18 during the conference, which brought together astronomers, space scientists and geoscientists from the UK and beyond for a day of lectures and networking.
During one of the breaks, I caught up with Richard Harrison, the chief scientist at RAL Space, which hosted the conference.
Looking further in the future, Harrison is particularly excited about a not-yet-funded ESA spacecraft called Lagrange, which would act as a pathfinder to a 24/7 monitoring service for space weather

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