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Investing.com -- A satellite designed to detect methane emissions from oil and gas operations has been lost in space, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF (EPA:EDF)) announced Tuesday.
The $88 million MethaneSAT, which had been collecting emissions data and images from drilling sites, pipelines, and processing facilities worldwide since March, went off course approximately 10 days ago. Its last known location was over Svalbard, Norway, and the EDF does not expect to recover it as the satellite has lost power.
"We’re seeing this as a setback, not a failure," said Amy Middleton, senior vice president at EDF. "We’ve made so much progress and so much has been learned that if we hadn’t taken this risk, we wouldn’t have any of these learnings."
The satellite’s launch in March 2023 marked a significant step in EDF’s campaign to hold accountable more than 120 countries that pledged to curb methane emissions in 2021. It also aimed to help enforce promises made by 50 oil and gas companies at the Dubai COP28 climate summit in December 2023 to eliminate methane and routine gas flaring.
While other projects publish satellite data on methane emissions, MethaneSAT provided more detailed information on emission sources and partnered with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to create a publicly-available global map of emissions.
The project received financial backing from several sources, including a $100 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020, as well as support from Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation, the TED Audacious Project, and EDF donors. The New Zealand Space Agency was also a project partner.
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