MethaneSAT

07.03.2024

MethaneSAT , Daily Current Affairs , RACE IAS : Best IAS Coaching in Lucknow 

Why in the news?

Recently, the MethaneSAT satellite was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket from California.

About MethaneSAT:

• It will track and measure methane emissions at a global scale. It will provide more details and have a much wider field of view than any of its predecessors.
• The entity behind MethaneSAT is the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)  , a US-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
• It is developed in collaboration with Harvard University, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and the New Zealand Space Agency.
• It will orbit the Earth 15 times a day, monitoring the oil and gas sector. It will create a large amount of data, which will tell “how much methane is coming from where, who’s responsible, and are those emissions going up or down over time”,
• The data collected by this will be made public for free in near real-time. This will allow stakeholders and regulators to take action to reduce methane emissions.

Features:

○It is equipped with a high-resolution infrared sensor and a spectrometer.

○It can track differences in methane concentrations as small as three parts per billion in the atmosphere

○It also has a wide-camera view — of about 200 km by 200 km — allowing it to identify larger emitters, so-called “super emitters”.

• The collected data will be analyzed using cloud-computing and AI technology developed by Google — the company is a mission partner — and the data will be made public through Google’s Earth Engine platform.

                                                           Source: Indian Express