Global Methane Pledge signatories failing to curb emissions, satellite data shows
Antoine Rostand, President of energy and environmental intelligence company Kayrros, warns 'the clock is ticking'.
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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
🌍 COP30 kicked off this week in Brazil. Energy and environmental intelligence company Kayrros, which crunches satellite data using AI and machine-learning, warned that the signatories of the Global Methane Pledge were failing to curb emissions. The Guardian reports:
‘As the conference begins, the Guardian can reveal that one key climate pledge is already being undermined. At Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, the UK, the US, the EU and other countries forged the global methane pledge, requiring a cut in methane of 30% by 2030. About 159 countries subsequently signed up.
Yet emissions from some of the main signatories have increased, data from the satellite analysis company Kayrros shows, which is likely to further raise global temperatures. Collectively, emissions from six of the biggest signatories – the US, Australia, Kuwait, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Iraq – are now 8.5% above the 2020 level.
Kuwait and Australia have made progress on cutting their emissions but emissions from US oil and gas operations have increased by 18%.
Antoine Rostand, the president of Kayrros, said: “Despite the promises made year after year, despite the worsening state of the climate, methane emissions are rising. Our analysis makes that painfully clear. Can we expect things to change? We must at least hope they do. The clock is ticking.”’
🔭 Commercial space stations are ‘the next frontier’, writes The Times. Private firms are racing to fill the gap left by the retirement of the International Space Station:
‘The Californian start-up behind it, Vast, wants to build the first commercial space station and aims to launch it as soon as next year. Success would signal a new era in spaceflight, one where nation states no longer collaborate to maintain a human presence above the planet.
The International Space Station (ISS), a 420-tonne symbol of post-Cold-War co-operation that has hosted crews continuously for a quarter of a century, is nearing retirement. The plan is to crash it into the Pacific around 2030, creating a vacancy in low-Earth orbit that a host of firms are battling to fill.
Vast, which has 1,000 staff and is backed by Jed McCaleb, a cryptocurrency billionaire, is part of the race to build a successor.
The spacecraft it launched this week, Haven Demo, carries no pressurised cabin and no life-support system. Instead it is packed with the electronics and machinery the company plans to rely on for its future stations: propulsion hardware, batteries and chargers, flight computers and navigation software.’
🔎 An investigation into the loss of a MethaneSat could not identify a single root cause for the spacecraft’s failure earlier this year, writes SpaceNews – though the report suggests its developers ‘compromised on quality’:
‘In a two-page report released by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Nov. 7, an investigation into the failure said the spacecraft malfunctioned likely because of a “solitary event” in either its avionics unit or electrical power subsystem.
However, the limited data available kept investigators from making a more precise determination. “While the investigation concluded that the direct cause began with or spread to one of the two identified subsystems, the specific reason for the system failure remains unknown,” the report stated. …
The report said it could not rule out several other potential causes, ranging from an orbital debris impact to “unexpected fault system interactions,” but concluded each was significantly less likely that the other factors.’
There has not been a significant increase in failed satellites during the current peak in the 11-year solar cycle, he noted in a Nov. 6 blog post about the mission. “But for whatever reason, MethaneSAT could not cope with the harsh but easily foreseeable environment it encountered in space.”
That and other issues, he argued, suggested that EDF rushed to complete the spacecraft to meet its March 2024 launch date on a SpaceX rideshare mission. “Unfortunately, it looks as if the EDF might have compromised on quality in order to keep to some semblance of its original schedule,” he concluded.
⚡️ A ‘cannibal storm’ is headed to Britain, reports Sky News, forcing NASA to cancel a space launch:
‘NASA has postponed a space launch due to a “cannibal” solar storm that could also disrupt GPS, communication systems and power grids.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) upgraded its forecast to the maximum and said the ongoing storm had already interfered with communications and satellite navigation.
It said the storm could feed off another one, becoming a “cannibal storm” - one of the biggest in 20 years - and reaching Britain this afternoon.’
🌙 In an opinion piece, author Rocky Avento warns against ‘the fallacy of being first’, arguing that NASA should not ‘accelerate its lunar landing timeline’ to beat China to the Moon.
‘The Apollo program was one of humanity’s greatest achievements, demonstrating United States innovation and capability on a grand scale. Yet it was, at its core, a politically motivated effort — a race measured in moments, not longevity. Once the flag was planted and the competition won, the effort faded. Apollo lacked the commercial framework or sustained infrastructure to make lunar operations a permanent part of our economy or civilization. When the race ended, so did the funding, the focus and the continuity.
Now, with the Artemis program, we may be seeing history repeat itself. The push to land first — this time to beat China — risks overshadowing the deeper goal: building a lasting lunar infrastructure that supports industry, science and commerce. Without an infrastructure architecture — a long-term strategy of power systems, communication networks, transportation and habitation — the Artemis missions risk becoming another expensive demonstration of technical skill rather than a sustainable step forward.’
🪖 French President Emmanuel Macron warns that space is ‘no longer a sanctuary’, but ‘a battlefield’, reports NDTV:
‘Without giving specific details, Macron announced an additional 4.2 billion euros ($4.9 billion) in funding for military space activities up to 2030.
In a “fragile” European space sector, he also stressed the need to “encourage our European champions to be competitive on the global market”.
The priorities outlined for France’s space strategy included “developing future launchers” that are reusable, have low-cost propulsion and high-thrust engines.
In a nod to the ambitious programmes of American billionaires Elon Musk who leads Space X and Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, Macron said: “Depending on a major third-party power or any space magnate is out of the question.
“Let us be ready: this will be a condition for the success of military operations on land, in the air and at sea.”’