Mission Control, we have liftoff on burps
Rocket Lab has won the Government’s contract to set up and run the mission control for MethaneSAT, an international space project to measure cow burps, gas pipeline leaks and other sources of methane, the company said yesterday.
The satellite project is being part-funded by the Government and run by the nonprofit US Environmental Defense Fund, among others.
University of Auckland will take over operations from Rocket Lab after about a year, and will host the control centre at its central Auckland campus.
Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck said he had suggested the idea of New Zealand’s involvement with the satellite to the Government, after he heard about the proposed mission through international collaborators.
The former Invercargill man said, despite that initial discussion, Rocket Lab had to bid at arm’s-length to develop and operate the mission control.
‘‘We suggested [New Zealand’s involvement], but the Government took it from there.’’
Science Minister Megan Woods announced in late 2019 the 350kg satellite would have its mission control based in New Zealand after the Government contributed $26m to the mission.
The funding comprises $18m to establish the mission control, $6m for the agricultural methane detection programme headed by Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, and $2m allocated for ‘‘programme management resources’’ over the life of the mission, Woods said. The minister’s office added that Auckland University would get a separate allocation to host the mission control, of up to $3.35m over four years.
The satellite is primarily designed for finding oil and gas pipeline leaks, enabling researchers to tell the oil and gas industry exactly where fugitive gas is coming from, with the aim of getting leaks plugged. Losing methane from pipes is often more costly to oil and gas companies than fixing the leaks – provided someone pinpoints the source.
Niwa greenhouse gas researcher Mikaloff-Fletcher will also lead a New Zealand-based research effort to use the satellite to accurately detect agricultural methane coming from farms around the world.
In an announcement today, Rocket Lab said it would develop, manage and operate the mission control at the University of Auckland. Its software will be tasked with tracking, pointing and positioning the satellite, and preventing crashes. Aerospace company Blue Canyon will build the spacecraft bus and Harvard University is developing the sensor to detect methane, Beck said.
University of Auckland’s Space Institute director, Guglielmo Aglietti, said Rocket Lab had the capability to get the operation running quickly, because it was already launching satellites. However, once the procedures and software were set up, control would be handed to the university, which would continue running the satellite control for the rest of the satellite’s lifetime – around five years, he said. The mission control would be in the university’s engineering building on Symonds Street and would use people from both the science and engineering faculties, said Aglietti.
Beck said it would be exciting training students and giving them access to a ‘‘real deal spacecraft’’.
Rocket Lab will also collect the greenhouse gas measurement data from the satellite to share with researchers from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and others, the company said.
As for what driving the satellite involves, Beck said: ‘‘It’s travelling at about 28 times the speed of sound and, as it travels around the Earth, every 90 minutes, it travels over ground stations or satellite dishes on the ground on every pass.’’ Rocket Lab and University of Auckland would ‘‘drive’’ the satellite, he said, moving it and pointing its sensor at points of interest, before returning the data using ground stations around the world.
Mission control would run 24/7, Beck said. ‘‘You’ve got this flying robot that is highly complex that you need to manage and do maintenance on.’’
Mikaloff-Fletcher previously told Stuff New Zealand will be the testing ground for efforts to detect methane emissions from animals’ stomachs anywhere in the world, using the satellite.
Globally, scientists know methane is rising but not exactly how much of the increase is from livestock, as opposed to wetlands, rice paddies, gas and oil pipelines and other sources.
After the satellite’s launch, in 2022, those working on the mission hope it will reveal how much methane is being released, from where, at higher resolutions than before, shedding light on the true climate impact of pipe leaks, farming and other activities in countries that don’t keep good national tallies of their outputs.
Because the Government has excellent records of how much greenhouse gas is burped by the country’s roughly five million dairy cows and other ruminants, New Zealand was the perfect place to test the accuracy of the satellite’s agri-methane measurements from space, said Mikaloff Fletcher last year.
The oil and gas-tracking part of the mission will be run from Harvard, and the satellite’s launch will also take place in the US.
A recent research effort by the Global Carbon Project confirmed the methane level was rising in the atmosphere faster than it had for 20 years. 2020 saw a record surge in atmospheric levels of the heat-trapping gas.
Rocket Lab said MethaneSAT would publish its data free of charge, so the public could compare progress by both companies and countries towards cutting methane emissions. Methane is the second largest human-made global heating problem after the biggest culprit, carbon dioxide.