Eloise
Gibson, Climate Change Correspondent
The
Green Party is calling for Space Minister Judith Collins to
tell the public what she knows about delays to a
government-funded satellite.
But Collins says the
government has committed to obligations of confidentiality
when it comes to discussing the troubled
satellite.
The government pitched in almost $30
million dollars to MethaneSAT but has not answered questions
on exactly why the control of the spacecraft has been
returned to its makers in Colorado for several months,
instead of being handed to the University of
Auckland.
Collins said confidentiality obligations
covered issues of commercial sensitivity but were also
important for the government to be able to “undertake
discussions on New Zealand’s participation in the
mission”.
The methane-hunting satellite has been
handed back to its makers in Colorado so they can fix
unspecified “challenges affecting its operation”.
In
response to questions from Green Party space spokesperson
Teanau Tuiono about what exactly happened, Collins said
officials had updated her on the progress of MethaneSAT, but
declined to address what was wrong when asked.
Tuiono
said the public should be told what had
happened.
“With MethaneSAT being the first official
government-funded satellite mission, it is concerning the
Minister isn’t being upfront with what the issues are, and
it looks like the minister does know what the problem is,”
said Tuiono.
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“At the bare minimum we should have
transparency about the progress of government funding to the
tune of $30 million dollars,” he said.
“But we don’t
know what’s happening.”
Collins’ written reply to
Tuiono said: “Space missions often experience a range of
delays. The government needs to balance sharing information
on investment implementation against obligations of
confidence concerning operational details and upholding New
Zealand’s interests in negotiations.”
Delayed
handover affecting students
University of Auckland
staff and students were expected to take over the mission
control of the MethaneSAT spacecraft before the end of last
year.
The ability to operate the controls came after
the New Zealand government pitched in millions to the
mission, including supporting local scientists to develop
ways to use the satellite to detect cow burps. Its main
targets are oil and gas fields.
The learning
opportunity for budding scientists partly justified both the
government’s investment in MethaneSAT itself, and a separate
government investment in the university’s new Te Pūnaha
Ātea Space Institute.
RNZ asked earlier this year why
control had not been handed over.
On March 5,
MethaneSAT’s owners, the Environmental Defense Fund,
released a statement via the website of the New Zealand
government’s space agency.
It said the mission
operations control centre had been “temporarily transferred”
to Blue Canyon Technologies in Colorado, USA, which built
the satellite.
The announcement came after questions
dating back to September 2024 from RNZ about apparent delays
to the data meant to be published by the mission, and just a
few months after MethaneSAT told RNZ there were “no issues
with the satellite”.
The 5 March statement said
MethaneSAT was still committed to ensuring the mission
operations control centre was transferred to Auckland’s Te
Pūnaha Ātea Space Institute.
“It is anticipated that
University staff will be on console no later than the end of
June 2025,” it said.
As for what had prompted the plan
change, the statement said, “Both the satellite’s
spectrometer and the mission’s data platform are functioning
well. They have been producing high quality data since June
2024.”
The statement didn’t address the performance of
the spacecraft that is carrying the spectrometer around the
world.
MethaneSAT’s goal is to supply “actionable”
data to shut down flows of methane gas from oil and gas
basins globally, an important lever in fighting climate
change.
Methane is short lived but potent at heating
the planet, and it is often vented to the air overseas as a
result of oil and gas drilling.
The project published
some data in March, showing emissions from fields in the US,
Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, which it said
“demonstrate the valuable role that satellites play in
regularly monitoring methane”.
But in New Zealand, few
answers have been forthcoming from the government about why
the mission’s data has failed to flow as fully as expected,
or why Blue Canyon Technologies took back control of the
spacecraft.
New Zealand company Rocket Lab had been
operating it, and was meant to hand the mission control
directly to the University.
In further written
questions lodged by Tuiono in Parliament, Collins was asked
whether it was appropriate that the New Zealand public had
not been informed of the specific issue with the
mission.
Tuiono also asked Collins if she’d been
briefed on what the University of Auckland was using its
space institute for while awaiting handover of the mission
control.
Collins said she hadn’t been directly briefed
but the University had reported to space agency officials
that it had delivered a number of “outputs” including
“education, hosting visits, and teaching courses, and
engagement with local and international participants in the
space industry”.
The process of deciding to fund the
satellite – and the subsequent lack of updates – has riled
some in New Zealand’s scientific community.
Professor
of physics at the University of Auckland Richard Easther,
who is not involved with the university’s part of the
mission, said it was “hard to square” MethaneSAT’s
statements to RNZ in October that there were no issues with
the satellite, with subsequent news that spacecraft was
being handed back to its makers.
The main text of that
October email is reproduced below.
“I am deeply
concerned about this situation,” Easther said.
“It is
very hard to square the October email from MethaneSat with
the recent announcement that control is being returned to
Blue Canyon,” he said.
“The October email says that
the spacecraft was in “nominal operations” and had “no
issues”. In particular, the word “nominal” has a specific
meaning in the space community – that the system is
operating within its design parameters.
“Potentially
the spacecraft has experienced a critical failure between
October and February. If so that should be disclosed,” he
said.
“If this hasn’t happened it raises serious
questions about the accuracy of the October
email.”
Ops engineers Mahima Seth and Vernon Lewis at
the University of Auckland’s mission control centre in
March, 2024.
The New Zealand space agency has
repeatedly said it can’t
answer questions about the reason for delays to the
spacecraft handover or other potential issues, citing
commercial sensitivity and confidentiality.
“The
refusal to answer reasonable queries starts to look like an
effort to conceal an unpleasant truth,” said
Easther.
“The public and the science community are
owed answers about why it has not yet delivered on its
goals.
“Commercial sensitivity is not a magic wand.
Our agreement with MethaneSat says ‘open and honest
communication’ is a core principle,” he
said.
“Involvement with MethaneSAT was supposed to be
a national ‘flagship’ for space. Right now it looks to be on
the rocks – we should be told whether we hope it can be
refloated or if it has actually sunk,” he said.
The
October 4 email from MethaneSAT said:
“We
appreciate your curiosity, and your entirely reasonable
query.
“We launched in March and went through
commissioning over a few months, as
expected.
“The process as a whole has taken
longer than we hoped, but there were no notable or
particular complications outside the realm of what would be
anticipated.
“Again, there is a lot of new
technology on this mission, both hardware and
software.
“For instance, commissioning our
thrusters went slower than planned because they are a new
model and the vendor was modifying their checkout procedure
for us as we were going along.
“As of now there
are no issues with the satellite or its data collection
performance.
“We have been collecting images
since May and have been in nominal operations since June
when commissioning completed and we turned it over to New
Zealand to operate.
“The team is looking
forward to more releases soon.
“Lastly, a quick
reminder that there were never any concrete deadlines
promised for data, for precisely the reason that there are
simply too many variables on a mission like
this.
“At some point there might be a book to
be written about every twist, turn and wrinkle we’ve
encountered over the nearly 10 years since MethaneSAT was
first conceived. There have been plenty. But this is about
as much detail as we have to offer right
now.
“Do keep checking in, and I will make sure
to reach out with new developments as they
occur.”
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