Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) and GHGSat Announce Successful Testing of Three New Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Satellites

Canadian based company GHGSat is expanding its constellation of methane monitoring satellites, expected to launch in spring/summer 2022.

“SFL is proud to play a role in the important work GHGSat is doing to provide greenhouse gas monitoring as a commercial service,” said SFL Director Dr. Robert E. Zee. “The GHGSat microsatellites are able to detect and measure methane emissions from sources on the Earth’s surface that are 100 times smaller than those identified by other satellites.”

The three new GHGSat commercial high-resolution satellites will join the company’s current constellation already in orbit - GHGSat-D (Claire), GHGSat-C1 (Iris) and GHGSat-C2 (Hugo) - also built by SFL. Each microsatellite includes attitude control technology developed by SFL that enables the low-inertia platforms to point their onboard sensors precisely at emissions sources.

“We see emissions today. With a growing satellite constellation, GHGSat will be able to monitor even more methane emission sources around the world, offering more data and statistics on growing climate changes and trends. We have the data to make a difference,” says Stephane Germain, GHGSat CEO.

All the GHGSat high-resolution satellites that have been, or are being, developed by SFL are built on the SFL 15-kilogram Next-generation Earth Monitoring and Observation (NEMO) microsatellite platform.