Methane Tracking Satellite Fails After Just One Year in Space

In a major setback for global climate monitoring efforts, the MethaneSAT satellite—launched just last year by the Environmental Defense Fund—has gone dark. The $88 million satellite was built to track methane emissions from oil and gas operations around the world. Now, after less than a year in orbit, the project’s team has lost contact. According to reporting by Raymond Zhong at the New York Times, it likely lost power and cannot be recovered.

MethaneSAT’s mission was crucial. Methane is a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO₂ in the short term, and it’s released not just from fossil fuel sites, but also from livestock farms, landfills, and wetlands. Although agencies like NASA already monitor methane from space, MethaneSAT offered unprecedented precision. Circling the Earth 15 times a day from 360 miles above, it could pinpoint specific sites leaking methane—something ground-based equipment or drones could rarely achieve at this scale.

The project was led by the Environmental Defense Fund with Support from the New Zealand Space Agency and donors like the Bezos Earth Fund. Despite its short life, the satellite beamed back “magnificent” data, according to EDF’s chief scientist Steven Hamburg. The team had even begun releasing images every two weeks. Early findings revealed that methane emissions from fossil fuel basins in North America and Central Asia were much higher than previous estimates.

Although the loss is a blow, the data already collected will still help push for stricter regulation and methane accountability. And that’s urgent—methane remains one of the fastest ways to heat the planet.

We can’t afford to keep losing time—or satellites. Let’s cut methane at the source. Eat more plant-based, ditch the gas, and demand climate accountability now.

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