The failed MethaneSat climate satellite apparently had problems from launch
According to a detailed New Zealand news report today, the failed MethaneSat climate satellite — funded and operated by the Environmental Defense Fund — apparently had significant problems during its short fifteen month life-span, going into safe mode many times, before failing completely last month.
An earlier report from this same news outlet described more fully the issues — which began in September 2024 only about six months after launch.
The mission’s chief scientist has now said more intense solar activity because of a peak in the sun’s magnetic cycle has been causing MethaneSAT to go into safe mode. The satellite has to be carefully restarted every time.
There has also been a problem with one of the satellite’s three thrusters, which maintain its altitude and steer the spacecraft. MethaneSAT says it can operate fully on two thrusters.
It appears there is a lot of unhappiness in New Zealand for spending $32 million on this project that was designed, built, and operated by an environmental activist organization with little space experience.
What is clear now is that the spacecraft likely got relatively little data during its fifteen month life span.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a detailed New Zealand news report today, the failed MethaneSat climate satellite — funded and operated by the Environmental Defense Fund — apparently had significant problems during its short fifteen month life-span, going into safe mode many times, before failing completely last month.
An earlier report from this same news outlet described more fully the issues — which began in September 2024 only about six months after launch.
The mission’s chief scientist has now said more intense solar activity because of a peak in the sun’s magnetic cycle has been causing MethaneSAT to go into safe mode. The satellite has to be carefully restarted every time.
There has also been a problem with one of the satellite’s three thrusters, which maintain its altitude and steer the spacecraft. MethaneSAT says it can operate fully on two thrusters.
It appears there is a lot of unhappiness in New Zealand for spending $32 million on this project that was designed, built, and operated by an environmental activist organization with little space experience.
What is clear now is that the spacecraft likely got relatively little data during its fifteen month life span.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Imagine that–folks who want to hold the world hostage to carbon footprint nonsense don’t have sense enough or appreciation for technical knowledge needed to launch a satellite that works.
Ha!
That’s even worse than guys on a dirt pile screaming Ayn Rand passages at rolls of steel hoping it flies.
I don’t speak Australian but I’d swear a lot of those sentences in that lengthy first linked article are missing verbs and nouns.
The Environmental Defense Fund is an NGO. Why is an NGO receiving money from the government? If it does it’s no longer an NGO.
A radical environmental leftist coworker is constantly leaving magazines from various environmental groups in the break room, like “Mono Lake Newsletter”, “Conservation International”, “Pacific Crest Communicator”. They are all expensive, professionally printed, color magazines. There must be hundreds of such NGOs, all professing that the only way to save the environment is communism.
Our tax dollars at work.
Perhaps somebody will do some digging and we’ll find out U.S.A.I.D. (American taxpayers) funded much of the $32MM. Thank goodness the money spigot got closed!
These big expensive satellites need to go. The amount of money all riding on a single item in a harsh environment just seems wasteful. It is better to create multiple copies of smaller craft. Test, launch, learn, test, launch, succeed. With a replicable process you reap benefits of costs. Of course satellites are getting bigger now after a short period of working smaller. Too bad.
You need a big light bucket for optics –you can’t cube-sat your way out.
The satellite was a “club” to beat us all with! Collecting data they could use that will hold up in environmental court to ransom money from those whom emitt/release environmental pollution… (Which we all qualify for with our individual foot prints)
All life is made of carbon and therefore guilty of the dirty carbon habit of eating carbon dioxide, or consuming the altered form of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates (oil and sugar).
Never mind the 10% of the crust of our planet has carbon in it.
Or that a large percentage of coronal mass injections from the sun has carbon in it.
The religious zealots of the environmental death cult won’t be satisfied until all life is under their thumb, to control all means of production, and there by reduce the population to a manageable level were no one can ever threaten their dominance or power again.
This may seem like a big setback, but when have they ever needed proof? The accusation alone is enough to destroy their enemies.
Jeff Wright,
Those “guys on a dirt pile” are on the critical path to any remaining usefulness for the stuff your favorite bunch of road agents in Huntsville have been forcing the US taxpayer to stand and deliver for so I’d say a little more love might be in order. They’ll be landing those “rolls of steel” on the Moon and Mars soon enough with or without any invocations to St. Ayn.
Anent “big light buckets” vs. cubesats, the folks at Planet respectfully disagree.
James Street,
With you on the whole government-funded “NGO” thing, but you might want to be careful about accusing Kiwis of “speaking Australian.” They’re inclined to be touchy about that.
Richard M,
There being no thought on the Left to speak of, no, it’s the money that counts.
Steve H.,
Amen, brother.
Joe,
The appropriate size for a satellite is whatever minimizes cost to get a given job done. Size used to be pretty much a proxy for cost, but not so much anymore.
MethaneSAT, in any case, wasn’t very big unless a typical cubesat is your comparand. It only massed 350 kg. For comparison, the latest versions of the Starlink V2-mini mass 575 kg. MethaneSAT launched, along with a lot of other comparatively small satellites, on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 mission back in March of last year.
It probably was one of the more expensive payloads on that mission, maybe the most expensive. Besides the $32 million the Kiwis reportedly kicked in, the Bezos Earth Fund apparently put in another $100 million.
It was built by Blue Canyon Technologies, a smallsat start-up of some years back that was subsequently acquired by Raytheon (now RTX Corp.) in 2020. MethaneSAT’s problems do not constitute a good look for a 1st-rank US defense contractor.
I suppose, if any entity on the modern progressive left was any longer capable of embarrassment, working with RTX would also be a bad look for the Environmental Defense Fund. But leftist excrement, as is widely known, does not stink – ever.
Now methanesat is space junk…ironic
With any luck, when it re-enters–I hope it strikes a Greenpeace ship on the bridge.
A recent article
https://www.al.com/news/2025/08/antarctica-research-facilities-what-an-alabama-congressman-saw-at-the-south-pole.html
Be happy–own nothing:
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-materialism-simple-life-happier.html
Eco-Tyrants
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-global-sovereign-states-legally-responsible.html