A revolutionary satellite owned by Jeff Bezos has been lost in space
This is bad news for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' business. His MethaneSAT satellite, worth $88 million, is currently lost in space and no one knows where it is.
This is a real blow, as the satellite was revolutionary and designed to measure and detect sources of methane emissions around the world that are responsible for global warming. This would enable the relevant authorities to tackle the sources of this powerful gas and reduce its impact on the environment. And this objective had been achieved for over a year.
In fact, this satellite has successfully identified industrial sources, such as the oil and gas industry, responsible for these large-scale emissions. And according to The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), this device has been very useful: “Thanks to MethaneSAT, we have gained critical insight about the distribution and volume of methane being released from oil and gas production areas. We have also developed an unprecedented capability to interpret the measurements from space and translate them into volumes of methane released. This capacity will be valuable to other missions.”
But we are talking about it in the past tense because it is no longer with us. It stopped transmitting on June 20. And despite the efforts of all the mission controllers, the satellite is still not responding. As a result, the EDF believes that it is completely lost, and it is possible to imagine that it is now drifting into the void of space or wandering endlessly in Earth's orbit.
On this subject, Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at EDF and head of the MethaneSAT mission, said with some emotion: “We’re going to take a pause. Obviously, we’ve suffered a loss. I have a large team of people who have put their heart and soul into what many people said was impossible.“ Thus, this loss is a huge disappointment for these teams, even though MethaneSAT wishes to seek new collaborators: ”To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking, and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology, and advocacy."
