The Spanish SATLANTIS announces its fourth mission with the launch of the GEI-SAT Precursor satellite from California

A satellite for the detection of methane

The company marks another milestone and launches GEI-SAT Precursor, the currently most precise mission for the detection of methane, whose capacity has been contracted for the European Commission and a US gas operator, following a collaboration project with the European Space Agency.

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Following the successful deployment of its previous satellite almost exactly a year ago, SATLANTIS, the world's leading provider of advanced Earth observation technologies, announces its fourth mission with the launch of the GEI-SAT Precursor satellite from California. 

Scheduled for today at 2.19:23 pm (Los Angeles time) – 19:XNUMX pm local time in Spain – it is a complete mission with unique capabilities for monitoring methane emissions (a highly potent greenhouse gas known for its impact significant in global warming).

GEI-SAT Precursor will travel on SpaceX's Transporter-8 mission aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, a flight shared with other small satellites to a sun-synchronous orbit 520 km away from Earth, from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) in Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

After passing field and flight tests, the satellite was smoothly integrated into the “cubesats deployer” at the end of May, and was sent to the launch site for integration into the Falcon 9 rocket.

GEI-SAT Precursor is the first satellite in the constellation GHG-SAT, which aims to provide unprecedented capabilities for CH4 (methane) measurements, along with three other satellites currently under construction.

GEI-SAT offers the most precise pixel size on the market, providing the best technology to detect the source of methane emissions with an accuracy of up to 6 m, distinguishing between possible emission sources that could be close to each other. 

Furthermore, GEI-SAT builds on the great success of its predecessor, URDANETA-ARMSAT_1, the best CubeSat currently in operation, with a multispectral resolution of 2 m, thanks to the advanced SATLANTIS iSIM-90 telescope. These capabilities (visible-near infrared) are also present in GEI-SAT, but now extend into the SWIR infrared bands.

 

The satellite is a type of small satellite, called CubeSat, whose heart is the iSIM-90 optical instrument, a small camera capable of providing high-resolution images for Earth observation.

This technology has gained the trust of the European Commission, as well as a US gas operator to take advantage of these capabilities, after an exhaustive technological and calibration process carried out in conjunction with the European Space Agency, Enagás and Encino.

The GEI-SAT Precursor Mission represents a complete solution for the detection, identification and quantification of methane emissions, including the payload, atmospheric radiative transfer models and final data products, allowing for accurate and detailed analysis of emissions. of methane mentioned, from the scientific concept to the provision of data to the end user.

SATLANTIS has reached 100 engineers at its headquarters in Bilbao, Florida and Cambridge (SuperSharp). The company is expanding GEI-SAT Precursor to a constellation of four satellites equipped with unprecedented capabilities to measure emissions of methane (CH4) and other greenhouse gases (GHG). 

In this Additional 16U CubeSat and two MicroSats under construction, with a launch schedule between the end of this year and the end of 2024. This project is being carried out in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the European Commission, Enagás and Encino.

The GEI-SAT Precursor Mission is one more step for SATLANTIS to continue leading Earth observation technologies, entering a very complex and highly specialized field in which satellites are put at the service of the planet's environmental challenges.