In an article for Nature, Professor Danielle Wood outlines the need for both public and commercial satellite missions to better understand and protect the environment.
Companies have made impressive progress in measuring Earth’s environmental changes from space. GHGSat, an emissions-monitoring company in Montreal, Canada, tracks methane leaks from landfill sites and oil rigs. Earth-imaging firm Planet in San Francisco, California, uses more than 200 satellites to record land and infrastructure for the energy, insurance and maritime sectors. Data-analytics company Spire in San Francisco converts radio signals from navigation satellites into estimates of ocean height and wind speed to support weather forecasts. European aerospace firm Airbus operates radar satellites that can be used to study volcanoes, wetlands and sea ice.
Space agencies are taking note, and several, including the European Space Agency and NASA, are incorporating commercial data into their portfolios to make them available to researchers. Both agencies have defined processes for evaluating externally produced data, providing science-based assessments of the accuracy, geographical targeting and usability of the observations.
As an academic researcher, I have been excited to participate in efforts to increase the adoption of data from commercial satellites to complement publicly provided information. For example, supported by NASA, I have begun to apply GHGSat data to estimate methane emissions from a landfill site in Brazil. I am also exploring how to use data from companies such as Spire to support hurricane risk-reduction efforts in Puerto Rico and Mexico.
I have found that data gathered by commercial organizations are innovative and useful. But I also know that private companies alone cannot provide all the Earth-observation data that the world needs. Nor should they.
