GHGSat is designing a second-generation satellite that should spot methane leaks half the size its current fleet can reliably see, the company said Monday, with launch planned for early 2028.
The company’s release puts the new satellite’s detection threshold, the smallest leak rate it can reliably pick up, at 50 kilograms of methane an hour. GHGSat’s first-generation satellites detect leaks from about 100 kilograms an hour.
Each new satellite would also cover twice as much ground a day as the current ones, about 20,000 square kilometres, according to the release. Customers would still get data within a day of the pass.
The company did not say who will build the satellite, what it will cost nor how many GHGSat intends to fly. GHGSat’s existing satellites were built by Toronto’s SFL Missions and U.S.-based Spire Global, with sensor payloads from ABB in Quebec City. The company raised $47 million in equity and debt in September 2025, saying part would go toward “the continued evolution” of its satellite technology.
GHGSat’s first-generation fleet is still growing. Its two newest satellites, C-16 and C-17, returned their first methane images in late July, and two more, C-18 and C-19, ordered from SFL Missions, are due to launch this year. The release says the fleet observed more than four million facilities in 2025.
“Our second-generation satellite is the next step in a decade of delivery: the next evolution of the only commercially operating methane monitoring constellation in the world,” chief executive officer Stephane Germain said in the release.
GHGSat also plans to pair the new satellite with DATA.AIR, its aircraft-mounted sensor, in what the industry calls tip-and-cue: a coarse, wide-area satellite flags a problem region, a sharper one finds the facility, and an aircraft measures the leak up close. The company says DATA.AIR detects leaks approaching 3.5 kilograms an hour in tests at Colorado State University’s Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center. That is sensitive enough, it says, for operators reporting under the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, a United Nations-backed reporting standard.