July 1, 2025, MethaneSAT, a groundbreaking climate satellite designed to precisely monitor methane emissions globally, has reportedly failed, losing contact with ground control after just over a year in orbit. The satellite, launched in March 2024 with significant backing from environmental non-profit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Jeff Bezos’s Earth Fund, and the New Zealand government, was intended to provide unprecedented transparency on methane leaks, particularly from the oil and gas industry. This unexpected loss is a considerable setback for global efforts to curb methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential 80 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

Contact with MethaneSAT was lost on June 20, 2025, and after extensive efforts to re-establish communication, the mission operations team confirmed on July 1, 2025, that the satellite had lost power and is likely unrecoverable. While a thorough investigation into the cause of the failure is underway, reports indicate that the satellite had been plagued by “persistent and deep-seated problems” since its launch, including repeatedly entering a sleep mode without prompting and the failure of one of its three thrusters. An Auckland University physics professor, while not directly involved, stated that MethaneSAT “seems to have had fairly persistent and deep-seated problems, pretty much from launch,” citing the decision to use sub-systems without “flight heritage” as a possible contributing factor.

The primary purpose of MethaneSAT was to provide high-resolution, publicly available data on methane emissions from oil and gas production regions worldwide, filling crucial data gaps and enabling better accountability for methane reduction pledges. It was designed to measure changes in methane concentrations as small as three parts per billion over wide areas, including both large “super-emitters” and smaller, more diffuse sources. During its operational period, MethaneSAT successfully collected valuable data, with initial findings revealing methane emissions in certain areas, such as the Permian Basin in the US and the South Caspian region, to be significantly higher—three to five times and over ten times, respectively—than official estimates. This demonstrated the satellite’s unique capability to provide more accurate and comprehensive insights into the methane problem.

Despite the premature end of its operational life, the Environmental Defense Fund, which led the project, has stated that the mission was a “remarkable success” in terms of scientific and technological accomplishment. They emphasize that the advanced spectrometers developed for MethaneSAT met or exceeded all expectations and that the insights gained from the collected data and the developed algorithms will be valuable for future missions and ongoing methane mitigation efforts. The EDF maintains that the core mission of turning methane measurement data into action will continue, and they will continue to process the data retrieved from the satellite, releasing additional scenes of global oil and gas production region-scale emissions in the coming months.

The loss of MethaneSAT underscores the inherent challenges and risks associated with space missions, even those designed for critical climate monitoring. While other satellites like the European Space Agency’s TROPOMI also monitor methane, MethaneSAT’s unique capabilities in terms of resolution and coverage provided a distinct advantage in pinpointing and quantifying emissions from specific sources. The failure represents a significant loss of a dedicated and highly precise tool in the global fight against climate change, potentially impacting the ability of countries and companies to independently verify their methane reduction progress and holding them accountable to their commitments under initiatives like the Global Methane Pledge and the Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter. However, the New Zealand Space Agency and EDF remain committed to leveraging the knowledge and data acquired to continue their efforts to slash methane emissions, acknowledging this as a “setback, not a failure.”