Toronto’s SFL Missions said Monday that GHGSat has awarded it a contract to build GHGSat-D2, a demonstration satellite that will weigh nearly 100 kilograms, about six times the 15-kilogram average of the satellites SFL has built for GHGSat since 2016.
SFL is building the satellite around a larger, higher-accuracy methane sensor from ABB Canada, which has previously supplied GHGSat sensors. The extra mass comes from the new sensor and from a bigger satellite bus, which SFL calls DEFIANT-XL.
The larger bus also carries new hardware. D2 gets a second star tracker, a camera that fixes the satellite’s orientation from the stars, to keep the sensor pointed accurately. SFL says the satellite can tilt up to 45 degrees across and along its orbit, so it can revisit a given site more often.
D2 will also have a propulsion system for maneuverability to avoid other satellites and fight the drag that solar activity puts on low orbits, and deployable solar panels to power the bigger sensor.
GHGSat announced a second-generation satellite a week earlier without naming a builder, and today’s SFL announcement closes that loop. D2 repeats last weeks promised performance: leaks as small as 50 kilograms of methane an hour, half what the current fleet can reliably detect, and daily coverage of 20,000 square kilometres per satellite, twice today’s. GHGSat has said the satellite is due in orbit in early 2028.
“Now, with our second-generation constellation, we’re building on that success to unlock a substantial leap in performance,” GHGSat chief executive officer Stephane Germain said in SFL’s release.
GHGSat’s two newest satellites, C-16 and C-17, returned their first methane images in late July and Thursday C-18 and C-19 are scheduled to launch on the SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
SFL did not state what the contract is worth.