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On March 4, the innovative MethaneSAT satellite was successfully launched aboard a Falcon9 rocket owned by SpaceX.

The MethaneSAT launch is a joint effort between Google, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the New Zealand Space Agency and Harvard University.

Its mission is to monitor methane emissions from the oil and gas industry from space to combat climate change and slow global warming. The satellite will use the computing power of Google Cloud to process information and provide interactive data about detected methane emissions. Interactive data will be provided through the EDF website and Google Earth Engine analytics platform. This will allow the general public to track progress in combating methane pollution and encourage companies to reduce their emissions to meet the challenges of climate change.

As the Environmental Defense Fund commented, the project is of great importance for about 50 oil and gas companies, which pledged to reduce methane emissions at the UN Global Climate Change Summit (COP28) last December.

Methane emissions are a serious problem from the point of view of the greenhouse effect; the power of this gas exceeds the warming capacity of carbon dioxide by 80 times. The oil and gas industry is one of the largest sources of methane emissions, surpassing emissions from agricultural waste and landfills.

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Photo: ixbt.com