GHGSat Approved for NASA Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program

The availability of GHGSat data in the CSDA program will also unlock novel emissions insights that will augment observations made by NASA and international partner satellites.

“GHGSat is proud to contribute to NASA’s efforts to monitor and better understand greenhouse gas emissions worldwide,” said Stéphane Germain, President and CEO of GHGSat. “GHGSat’s unique satellite data and analytics, capable of attributing emissions directly to individual facilities, illuminate a critical piece of the climate puzzle. These insights accelerate global transparency in greenhouse gas emissions, advance critical research, and develop knowledge in the fight against climate change. The successful completion of our CSDA evaluation is a reaffirmation of our leadership on measuring methane emissions with satellites and a testament to the relentless dedication of our team.”

In May 2023, NASA awarded GHGSat a task order to provide the CSDA program with methane emissions data to evaluate its utility for advancing the space agency’s Earth science and applications goals. Under the task order, GHGSat delivered both new observations and archival data to a CSDA scientific evaluation team that included researchers from NASA centers, other U.S. government agencies, and academia. Research projects supported by the GHGSat data evaluation included studies of anthropogenic and naturogenic methane emissions over land and water at sites in the United States and around the world.

The evaluation team assessed the utility of GHGSat’s data to advance Earth system science research, the quality of the data, and the quality of user support services. With the CSDA evaluation phase now successfully completed, GHGSat’s data will soon be available through the NASA Earthdata portal.

Established in 2017, the CSDA program identifies, evaluates, and acquires data from commercial sources that support NASA’s Earth science and application goals. Commercial data acquired through CSDA informs several critical NASA Earth science research and application areas, including Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems, Climate Variability and Change, Atmospheric Composition, and the Greenhouse Gas Center. NASA Earth Science division is looking to supplement their existing and future observations with commercial data to ensure data continuity and to leverage enhanced capabilities from new technologies.