GHGSat’s Hugo satellite which was launched a week ago has delivered its “first light” data with encouraging results.
GHGSat announced the news in a Tweet earlier today saying “GHGSat-C2 Hugo has successfully completed commissioning and delivered first light- the satellite’s first image of a methane plume- a key technical milestone achieved in less than a week. ‘The speed of this result is exceptional and we’re beyond proud.'”
According to GHGSat “The new satellite detected a methane plume from an oil and gas facility while overflying Asia (Figure 1). A day later, GHGSat tasked their second satellite “Iris”, equipped with the same, patented high-resolution instrument, to verify the data capture (Figure 2). Initial results indicate that Hugo has the same capability as Iris, ‘out of the box.'”
Stephane Germain, CEO of GHGSat commented saying “the speed of this first methane observation is exceptional and we’re very proud to have Hugo detecting emissions within its first week in orbit.”