Oops!: A satellite of Jeff Bezos is lost in space

A satellite funded by the American billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was lost in space while he was carrying out an important mission on climate change, New Zealand officials announced on Wednesday.

Designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions with an “unprecedented resolution”, the Methanesat space probe was also funded by Wellington and the Environment Defense Fund, an NGO based in the United States.

In the grip of technical problems, the satellite has ceased to respond to its controllers on Earth. They lost contact with him on June 20, the Methanesat team said in a statement.

They confirmed that the satellite had lost all its power last Monday and that it was “probably irrecoverable”.

“Obviously, this is a disappointing development,” said Andrew Johnson, a New Zealand space agency official.

“As those who work in the space sector know, space is (an environment) intrinsically difficult, and each attempt – successful or not – repels the borders of what we know and what we are capable of.”

The Environment Defense Fund, who supervised the project, said that it was a “difficult new”, but that it would not end its efforts to monitor methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Methanesat was designed to measure methane emissions that feed climate change by holding heat in the planet’s atmosphere.

“It was one of the most advanced methane monitoring satellites in space, which measured methane emissions in the oil and gas producing regions around the world,” said the Methanesat team.

The satellite was launched in space in March 2024 at the back of a SpaceX rocket from California.