The Bezos-funded climate satellite is lost in space

The news article discusses the loss of the MethaneSat, a satellite built to track global methane pollution. The satellite, which was funded by Jeff Bezos and other tech leaders, was meant to spot methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure and hold the industry accountable for reducing emissions. The satellite, which cost $88 million to build and launch, lost power on June 20th and is "likely not recoverable," according to the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) that developed it. MethaneSat was launched in March 2022 from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and was the first government-funded space mission by New Zealand's Space Agency. Before MethaneSat, EDF had to rely on ground and aircraft-based measurements to detect methane leaks, which found that US methane emissions were 60% higher than EPA estimates between 2012 and 2018. MethaneSat was expected to be able to survey an area in 20 seconds that would have taken an aircraft 2 hours, covering over 80% of global oil and gas production. Despite the loss of the satellite, EDF says it is still working to process the data MethaneSat was able to gather, which it hopes can be used to limit methane pollution.