Colorado has led the nation on regulating methane emissions and now companies in the state are major contributors to a new satellite expected to be an important tool in identifying and quantifying the emissions globally.
Space and Mission Systems, formerly Ball Aerospace, built the instrument that will identify and measure methane, a prime contributor to the heat-trapping emissions that are driving climate change. The company, acquired earlier this year by British-based BAE Systems, tested the instrument, integrated it with the spacecraft and is commissioning the spectrometer as it orbits Earth.
Blue Canyon Technologies in Lafayette built the satellite, which was launched March 4. The craft used is Blue Canyon’s largest, about the size of an oven, and can carry up to 440 pounds of payload.
“Blue Canyon Technologies is fortunate to collaborate on unique missions, such as MethaneSAT, which expand the frontiers of science and space,” Chris Winslett, general manager of Blue Canyon, said in an email.
The two Colorado companies are among the partners assembled by the Environmental Defense Fund for its space mission, believed to be the first headed by a nonprofit. A subsidiary of EDF created the program MethaneSat to develop and launch the satellite to gather data on methane.
The data will be analyzed and made available to the public for free.
BAE Space and Mission Systems has a long history of working with corporate, government and military customers. Working with EDF, it was important to be efficient and cost-conscious, said Brian Pramann, the program manager for the company.
The development and launch of the methane-seeking satellite cost about $88 million. Alberto Conti, vice president and general manager for Space and Mission Systems’ civil space business unit, said EDF didn’t have the kind of background and experience that many of the company’s other clients do.
“But at the same time it kind of empowered Brian’s team to take a look at innovative ideas and how we can do things in a more nontraditional way,” Conti said.
The experience with EDF inspired Conti to open a new area in the civil space program to pursue similar projects.
Jon Goldstein, with EDF, said Colorado has been a leader in regulating methane emissions, and the fact that the satellite and instrument for MethaneSat were built in Colorado is a continuation of the state’s leadership.
In 2014, Colorado approved the first state-level methane regulations in the country. The state’s regulations served as a model for federal rules during the Obama administration.
“The state has improved on the regulations multiple times and has stayed at the vanguard, not just nationally but internationally, of efforts to limit oil and gas methane pollution,” said Goldstein, who is based in Denver and is the senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs for EDF.
As efforts to curb the greenhouse gas emissions have intensified, methane has emerged both as an urgent concern and possible pathway to blunting some of the more immediate impacts of climate change.
Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, but has a lifespan of up to 12 years. Carbon dioxide can last for hundreds of years.
The International Energy Agency said methane is behind about 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution. Scientists believe cutting methane emissions will help slow the rate of the Earth’s warming.
“Cutting methane pollution from fossil fuel operations, agriculture and other sectors is the single fastest way to slow the rate of warming as we continue to decarbonize our energy systems,” EDF President Fred Krupp said in a statement.
“To do that requires comprehensive data on this pollution on a global scale. MethaneSat will show us the full scope of the opportunity by tracking emissions to their source,” Krupp said.
The instrument that Broomfield-based SMS built for MethaneSat has two infrared sensors, or imaging spectrometers, that use light reflected from the surface of the Earth. Conti believes EDF contacted SMS because of its nearly 70-year history of building sophisticated instruments.
The company was founded as Ball Aerospace in 1956 and its work includes building seven of the instruments that were on the Hubble Space Telescope. Another project was building a 21-foot mirror system to capture light from objects for the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble.
“When EDF came to us asking for the sensitivity of the sensor, their goal was attribution,” Conti said.
The goal is to determine if a methane source is livestock, a leaking oil pipeline, an oil and gas field or a landfill. Pramann said the instrument can see “very fine degrees of detail” within a swath of about 200 kilometers, approximately 124 miles. The satellite will orbit Earth 15 times a day.
“We can assess the amount of methane that’s emanating from a pipeline versus that which is in a storage tank versus that which is coming from part of a feedlot,” Pramann said.
MethaneSAT can detect methane emissions as small as 3 parts per billion. One part per billion equates to a drop of ink in a large gasoline tanker truck or one second in nearly 32 years, according to a fact sheet by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Filling the gaps
A number of methane-measuring instruments are in orbit or are in the works, Pramann said. Some look at small ranges, like looking through a soda straw and homing in one tower or one small facility, he said. Another sensor might measure all of Long Island and take large-scale measurements.
“There’s nothing that fits in between, so the technical challenge here was creating a system, creating an instrument, that made measurements that could span those two,” Pramann said.
Although all sources of methane emissions will be part of the picture, the oil and gas industry is of particular interest. Methane regulations in Colorado and nationally focus on the industry’s contribution to methane levels.
Kait Schwartz, director of the Colorado branch of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association, said the industry is using innovative technologies, including satellites, and on-the-ground processes to help detect and reduce methane emissions. She said the industry welcomes third-party efforts to produce transparent and accurate data “and we are ready to partner together on efforts to develop actionable data and drive collaboration to further reduce methane emissions.”
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Pramann’s team at SMS is monitoring the orbiting satellite, making sure everything is functioning. The company is expected to hand off operation of MethaneSat in May to the New Zealand Space Agency, one of the partners in the program.
Other partners are researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. They will support the analysis that will be disseminated by EDF.
While MethaneSat is an exciting space mission, its objective of trying to get a handle on climate change resonated with the SMS team, Pramann said.
“I had people through the course of this mission actively come up to me and say, “Hey, I want to work on this. I loved working on this project. Can we do it again?’
“Everybody here at SMS and throughout the course of this project recognized the importance of the measurements that we’re going to make on their daily lives and the world, especially living in Colorado, a place that can be affected by climate change through things like fires and floods,” Pramann said.
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