NASA has launched a satellite called Tanager-1 to measure greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Photo courtesy of Planet Labs PBC/NASA
Aug. 18 (UPI) – A state-of-the-art greenhouse gas tracking instrument has been launched into orbit and will measure methane and carbon dioxide emissions down to the level of individual facilities and equipment on a global scale, NASA announced.
Tanager-1 is the first satellite in orbit as part of NASA’s Carbon Mapper Coalition and uses spectrometer technology developed by the Joint Propulsion Laboratory.
“The imaging spectrometer technology on board Tanager-1 is the product of four decades of development at NASA JPL and is truly in a class of its own,” said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. “The data this public-private partnership will provide on the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will be precise and global, benefiting everyone.”
Tanager-1 will cover 127,000 square kilometers of the Earth’s surface every day and analyze the greenhouse gases emitted by individual plants.
Carbon Mapper scientists will analyze data collected from the orbit to identify gas clouds with unique methane and carbon dioxide characteristics and locate their sources. The data on the clouds will be publicly available online on the Carbon Mapper data portal.
“The Carbon Mapper Coalition is a prime example of how organizations from different sectors are coming together to achieve the common goal of combating climate change,” said Riley Duren, CEO of Carbon Mapper. “By tracking, locating and quantifying super emitters and making this data available to decision makers, we can spur meaningful action to reduce emissions around the world.”
The Tanager-1 spacecraft is part of a larger effort to make data on methane and carbon dioxide accessible and give scientists data points on which they can then take action.
For this purpose, measurements taken with NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, an imaging spectrometer developed by JPL and installed on the International Space Station, are used.
Methane and carbon dioxide are the biggest contributors to climate change, scientists say. About half of global methane emissions are due to human activities, including fossil fuel emissions, agricultural practices and waste management.
Today, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is 50 percent higher than it was in 1750. This increase is largely due to the extraction and combustion of coal, oil and gas, NASA explained in its Tanager-1 press release.
Tanager-1 was part of the payload that SpaceX launched on Friday from Vandenberg Spaceport in California.
