Satellite technology for greenhouse gas emissions monitoring
Precise greenhouse gas emissions intelligence through seamless, scalable, and mission-ready satellite infrastructure.
About GHGSat
GHGSat is pioneering greenhouse gas monitoring with advanced space technology, featuring the first sensors that can pinpoint methane and CO₂ emissions from individual industrial facilities. Based in Montreal, Canada, GHGSat empowers decision-makers to tackle emissions, driving industrial efficiency with environmental impact.
To scale their operations, GHGSat partnered with Spire Global, utilizing the Space-as-a-Service model. This allowed GHGSat to focus on perfecting the superior technical performance of their emissions-monitoring services while Spire managed the entire satellite infrastructure from manufacturing and launch, to ongoing operations.
Challenge
GHGSat faced increasing demand for emissions intelligence, requiring a scalable, cost-effective approach to the expansion of its satellite constellation. To scale seamlessly, the company needed a solution that preserved internal resource demand, minimized operational complexities, and ensured guaranteed data quality and satellite performance. Flexibility and seamless integration with existing systems was key, with a satellite platform which was able to adapt to evolving payload and monitoring needs being essential. All of these requirements had to be achieved with predictable costs, enabling GHGSat to stay focused on its core mission to deliver powerful emissions data and analytics.
Solution
Partnering with Spire delivered a turnkey satellite solution featuring custom-built satellites optimized for methane and CO₂ monitoring payloads and built-in scalability. The solution provided dedicated operations and data downlink, along with an integrated tasking API integration allowing GHGSat to control satellites within its own ecosystem. A predictable flat monthly fee model and end-to-end technology stack seamlessly integrated Spire’s hardware, software, and ground infrastructure.
Results
Spire built and now operates three 16U satellites for GHGSat (Juba, Vanguard, and Elliot), launched onboard SpaceX’s Transporter-9 mission. Building on the original design of detecting methane, the constellation capability evolved to deliver methane and CO₂ monitoring. Vanguard became the first commercial high-resolution CO₂ monitoring satellite capable of pinpointing emissions from individual industrial sites.
The first three Spire-built satellites exceeded capacity expectations, with an additional four GHGSat satellites, utilizing Spire’s design, now scheduled to launch no earlier than Transport-15 and -17 missions. Each satellite is capable of rapidly processing 5GB of emissions data daily.