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By European Space Agency
ESA's Prospect package, including drill and a miniaturised laboratory, will fly to the Moon’s South Polar region in search of volatiles, including water ice, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
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By NASA
This artist’s concept depicts one of the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager satellites, the first of which launched on Aug. 16. Tanager-1 will use imaging spectrometer technology developed at JPL to measure greenhouse gas point-source emissions.Planet Labs PBC Developed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the imaging spectrometer will provide actionable data to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming.
Tanager-1, the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s first satellite, which carries a state-of-the-art, NASA-designed greenhouse-gas-tracking instrument, is in Earth orbit after lifting off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:56 a.m. PDT Friday, Aug. 16. Ground controllers successfully established communications with Tanager-1 at 2:45 p.m. PDT the same day.
The satellite will use imaging spectrometer technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to measure methane and carbon dioxide point-source emissions, down to the level of individual facilities and equipment, on a global scale. Tanager-1 was developed as part of a philanthropically funded public-private coalition led by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper. Planet Labs PBC, which built Tanager-1, and JPL are both members of the Carbon Mapper Coalition and plan to launch a second Tanager satellite equipped with a JPL-built imaging spectrometer at a later date.
“The imaging spectrometer technology aboard Tanager-1 is the product of four decades of development at NASA JPL and truly in a class of its own,” said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. “The data that this public-private partnership provides on sources of greenhouse gas emissions will be precise and global, making it beneficial to everyone.”
Once in operation, the spacecraft will scan about 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers) of Earth’s surface per day. Carbon Mapper scientists will analyze data from Tanager-1 to identify gas plumes with the unique spectral signatures of methane and carbon dioxide — and pinpoint their sources. Plume data will be publicly available online at the Carbon Mapper data portal.
Methane and carbon dioxide are the greenhouse gases that contribute most to climate change. About half of methane emissions worldwide result from human activities — primarily from the fossil fuel, agriculture, and waste management industries. Meanwhile, there is now 50% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there was in 1750, an increase largely due to the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas.
“The Carbon Mapper Coalition is a prime example of how organizations from different sectors are uniting around a common goal of addressing climate change,” said Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper CEO. “By detecting, pinpointing, and quantifying super-emitters and making this data accessible to decision-makers, we can drive significant action around the world to cut emissions now.”
The imaging spectrometer aboard the satellite measures hundreds of wavelengths of light that are reflected by Earth’s surface. Different compounds in the planet’s atmosphere — including methane and carbon dioxide — absorb different wavelengths of light, leaving spectral “fingerprints” that the imaging spectrometer can identify. These infrared fingerprints can enable researchers to pinpoint and quantify strong greenhouse gas emissions, potentially accelerating mitigation efforts.
Tanager-1 is part of a broader effort to make methane and carbon dioxide data accessible and actionable. That effort includes using measurements provided by NASA’s EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), an imaging spectrometer developed by JPL and installed on the International Space Station.
More About Carbon Mapper
Carbon Mapper is a nonprofit organization focused on facilitating timely action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Its mission is to fill gaps in the emerging global ecosystem of methane and carbon dioxide monitoring systems by delivering data at facility scale that is precise, timely, and accessible to empower science-based decision making and action. The organization is leading the development of the Carbon Mapper constellation of satellites supported by a public-private partnership composed of Planet Labs PBC, JPL, the California Air Resources Board, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and RMI, with funding from High Tide Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and other philanthropic donors.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
Kelly Vaughn
Carbon Mapper, Pasadena, Calif.
970-401-0001
kelly@carbonmapper.org
2024-109
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Last Updated Aug 16, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
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Engineer Adam Gannon works on the development of Cognitive Engine-1 in the Cognitive Communications Lab at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.Credit: NASA Automated technology developed in Cleveland has launched to space aboard the Technology Education Satellite 11 mission. The flight test aims to confirm the precision and accuracy of this new technology developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
The Cognitive Communications Project was founded by NASA in 2016 to develop autonomous space communications systems for the agency. Autonomous systems use technology that can react to its environment to implement updates during a mission, without needing any human interaction.
The project first collaborated with the Technology Education Satellite (TES) program at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley back in 2022 to launch the TES-13 CubeSat, which sent the first neuromorphic processor to space. A neuromorphic processor is a piece of technology built to act in ways that replicate how the human brain functions. Through TES-13, the cognitive team was able to test their advanced technology in space successfully for the first time.
Researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley assemble the Technology Education Satellite-11 CubeSat inside of a laboratory.Credit: NASA After the success of TES-13, the team compiled each of their unique capabilities into one end-to-end system, called Cognitive Engine 1, or CE-1. CE-1 is a space and ground software system that automates normal aspects of spacecraft communications, like service scheduling and planning reliable priority-based data transfers.
Cognitive technology launched to space for the second time on July 3 on TES-11 aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Noise of Summer mission. TES-11 was one of eight small satellites launched during the mission. It was created as a part of the Technology Education Satellite program at NASA Ames, which organizes collaborative projects and missions that pair college and university students with NASA researchers to evaluate how new technologies work on small satellites, known as CubeSats.
Image of various CubeSats deployed in space from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TES-11 is testing the components of CE-1 that allow satellites to independently schedule time with ground stations and download data without human interaction. Results from the TES-11 mission will be used by the Cognitive Communications team to finalize their CE-1 design, to ensure that the technology is ready to be adopted by future NASA missions.
The Cognitive Communications Project is funded by the Space Communications and Navigation program at NASA Headquarters in Washington and managed out of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
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By European Space Agency
Build your own Ariane 6 rocket with ESA!
Download your printable kit and join the competition.
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By NASA
“The public perception of NASA has a lot to do with our technological successes and the discoveries that we’ve made, but none of that is possible without the people.
“In the six or so years that I’ve worked at NASA, I’ve learned a lot of incredible stories — not just of the struggles that different spacecraft encounter on their journeys throughout the universe. There are so many problems that need to be solved and fixes that need to be made, but there are also so many stories of teams that had to work together to accomplish their goals. And a lot of time, these teams are working after hours, on weekends, working late nights and early mornings. These are people who have other problems in their lives that they have to solve, and they’re still showing up and making magic happen.
“This is why [Aubrey Gemignani] and I started Faces of NASA: We wanted to make that connection. It’s not just rockets, astronauts, and telescopes. Hundreds of thousands of people come together to make these missions possible, and that’s the part that’s really interesting for me.
“I like to hold a mirror to other people, and in every Faces of NASA interview, I try to hold a mirror up to what the person has accomplished to get them to be proud of it. For many of those people, it’s the first time they have to self-reflect.
“That’s what’s really nice about [the Faces of NASA project]. Everyone who works here is just living day-to-day, so when they have an opportunity to stop for a moment and look back on how far they’ve come… it’s the best feeling for both of us. They’re like, ‘Wow, I’ve never really stopped to think about how much I’ve accomplished or how far I’ve come.’ And I get to share that moment with them. That’s my favorite part of Faces of NASA.”
– Thalia Patrinos, Communications Strategist, PCI Productions, NASA Headquarters
Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
Interviewer: NASA/Tahira Allen
Check out some of our other Faces of NASA.
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