In 2021, Planet entered into a partnership with Carbon Mapper, a new nonprofit organization, and its partners – the State of California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL), the University of Arizona, Arizona State University (ASU), High Tide Foundation and RMI to build a hyperspectral satellite constellation with the ability to pinpoint, quantify and track point-source methane and CO₂ emissions. Planet’s hyperspectral satellite mission allows for increased transparency and accountability by providing rapid methane leak detection, while its partner, Carbon Mapper, is developing a global portal for broader adoption and providing a trusted certification chain underpinned by its public-private partnership. This technology can provide governments with the tools to measure point-source methane emissions and enable remediation and prevention.

Once launched, Planet’s methane-specific hyperspectral offering, named Tanager, is intended to help users identify and quickly address methane plumes emanating from specific facilities. According to the US EPA, the major sources of methane emissions in urban areas come from landfills, agricultural sites, waste combustion, and fugitive emissions from oil and natural gas systems or wastewater treatment. Tanager’s capabilities can be tasked to assist in infrastructure surveys, producing greenhouse gas measurements for climate planning, and as a monitoring capability for areas of concern. Planet’s satellite-based technology aims to balance coverage and sensitivity, covering enough area with a frequency to meet user needs while providing the sensitivity needed to find facility-level leaks.

While methane is emitted from various natural and man-made sources, methane super-emitters release a disproportionately large amount of methane compared to other emitters. Super-emitters include industrial facilities such as oil and gas operations, coal mines and landfills with equipment or infrastructure issues leading to significant methane leaks. GHGSat is focused on identifying greenhouse gas super-emitters and ascertaining the precise location of the leak to quickly, effectively and (usually) inexpensively resolve it. Their nine-satellite constellation works alongside the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, which can produce a global map of methane emissions daily at a lower resolution. GHGSat’s higher resolution imagery can give more precise information to pinpoint the exact location of the emission source. The expanding fleet of satellites can provide data that would have been impractical and expensive to collect just a few years ago and help countries audit their climate impacts and more accurately monitor the progress of their Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

In March 2023, researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK discovered methane leaking from a faulty pipe in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, using satellite data from GHGSat. This marked the first time a UK methane emission has been seen from space and mitigated. The precise location was discovered with the 25m high-resolution satellite imagery, which can detect emissions from individual facilities, making small leaks visible and accurately measurable from space. Using data collected over two months, scientists discovered the site was leaking methane at a rate of ~200 – 1,400 kg/hr. Once the researchers and GHGSat alerted the pipeline owners, remedial action was taken through repairs, and the problem was fully resolved by June, with no further emissions detected. 

In 2021, GHGSat and ESA Copernicus satellites detected substantial quantities of methane leaking from landfill sites close to the center of Madrid, Spain. Scientists from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and GHGSat discovered both landfill sites combined emitted up to 8800kg of methane per hour in August 2021 – the highest observed in Europe by GHGSat. Additionally, in April 2021, a GHGSat satellite recorded large quantities of methane (approximately 4000 kg per hour) from the 73-hectare Matuail Landfill in south Dhaka, Bangladesh. Yet another landfill site near Jakarta, Indonesia, was measured to emit 15,900 kg per hour, equivalent to nearly 400,000 kg of carbon dioxide per hour.