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Become a memberThe novel Carbon Mapper partnership fights climate change and boosts space businessTim FernholzSenior ReporterDear readers,Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extraterrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: Space as a (government) Service, Yuri’s night, and another New Shepard rehearsal.Countdown Hold: This newsletter will be on hiatus until May 20, 2021, while I’m on sabbatical to focus on some long-term projects. I’ll miss you while I’m gone, but remain eager to hear all your thoughts on space business, so keep those emails coming!🚀 🚀 🚀“Methane emissions are analogous to a wildfire,” Riley Duren says. “Except these wildfires are invisible.”Duren is the CEO of a nonprofit, Carbon Mapper, that is working with the company Planet to launch two new satellites that will track these emissions from orbit. These occur at gas wells, pipelines, refineries, and power plants, but also landfills and cattle fields. While they dissipate faster than carbon dioxide, they have a greater proportional impact on global warming.Governments around the world have been working to put in place standards to reduce methane leaks and meet climate goals, but it is difficult to move what you can’t measure. That’s where Carbon Mapper comes in—it will crunch satellite data to produce usable insight for regulators, industries, and the public at large.The project grew out of former California governor Jerry Brown’s plan to use a satellite to gather data for the state’s Air Resources Board, which set up strict rules for methane in 2017. When Carbon Mapper’s project comes online in 2023, it is expected to make those rules much more effective. You can get a sense of what it might look like from this video, created with data collected by the future satellite sensor on an aircraft.“We have regulations in place already for oil and gas and landfills that require these sites are visited once a quarter to inspect for methane and mitigate anything they find,” Jorn Herner, who leads emission mitigation at the California Air Resource Board. “This will enable almost daily observations, and the efficacy of those mitigation actions is gong to improve drastically.”Existing satellites that can spot methane tend to be focused on the bigger picture than detecting leaks at individual facilities, and don’t offer the ability to revisit the same place frequently—a speciality for Planet’s small satellite constellations.The project is a unique public-private partnership between several non-profits, the state of California, the US national Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and two universities. JPL provided an advanced hyperspectral sensor for the project that gathers data across a far larger range of the electromagnetic spectrum than typical space sensors; Planet will build and operate the satellites, based on its existing SkySats; the data will be analyzed by Carbon Mapper and the other partners.While the program is initially funded by $100 million in donations, the second phase will rely on revenue sharing between Planet and Carbon Mapper, with Planet able to use the data from these satellites to serve customers in sectors ranging from agriculture to mining.Robbie Schingler, Planet’s chief strategy officer, says working with JPL’s advanced sensor is a key reason for the partnership. After receiving the first hardware from the federal lab, Planet will work to build another with the same image quality but that can be manufactured more efficiently for future spacecraft. The project aligns with Planet’s focus on sustainability, but it could also smooth the company’s continued push for ever more powerful sensors in orbit.The Carbon Mapper project demonstrates new models for government to work with private companies and achieve their goals in space.🌘 🌘 🌘IMAGERY INTERLUDEThis week marked the sixtieth anniversary of the first human to fly into space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The front page of the Huntsville Times—the local paper for many NASA scientists working to match Gagarin’s feat—offers a fascinating time capsule into what the moment was like:NASAGagarin was grounded after his historic spaceflight, seen as too important a symbol to risk, and died at 34 in an aircraft crash in 1968. I’m looking forward to cracking Beyond, a new book about how Gagarin became the first human to leave the atmosphere.👀 Read this 👀Indoor air pollution is a big problem in space, literally: In orbit, large pieces of dust and other contaminants that gravity would pull to the ground remain airborne, representing a health hazard to astronauts. Here on Earth, the particles are smaller, but just as insidious. Researchers worry about particles smaller than 2.5 microns that can enter the lungs and bloodstream, in turn increasing chances of all kinds of health risks. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of ventilation, but those lessons could have a big impact on global health if applied to indoor air pollutants around the world.Read more in Quartz’s field guide to indoor air pollution.🛰🛰🛰SPACE DEBRISSixteenth time is the charm? Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, a suborbital vehicle that will take tourists and researchers past the edge of space on ten-minute flights, completed another uncrewed mission yesterday. This included a dress rehearsal of loading and unloading passengers beforehand—featuring Blue luminaries like sales chief Clay Mowry and attorney Aubrey Powers—but as ever it’s not entirely clear what was tested onboard the New Shepard, or what remains to be verified before its long-awaited first flight with people onboard.A Capella. Capella, the space radar firm that released the first imagery from its operational satellites in March, has added three new members to its executive team, including its first CFO, Jon Campagna, lately of Virgin Galactic. Campagna’s LinkedIn bio hints at his goals: “Chief Financial Officer focused on public company readiness via IPO, SPAC or other non traditional methods.”The Lunar Agenda. We saw two big moves in private lunar exploration this week: Astrobotic, a US firm that is working with NASA to gather data on the moon, announced that a SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch a mission in 2023 carrying its Griffin Lander and NASA’s Viper moon rover. And the United Arab Emirates announced that it hired iSpace, a Japanese space exploration firm, to transport its first lunar rover to the surface of the moon in 2022.Cash flows. SpaceX raised more than $1 billion over the last two months, per regulatory filings, for more Starlink satellites and Starship demos, presumably. Hawkeye raised $55 million to support its radio-tracking satellites. And Sierra Nevada will spin out its space division, which it says generates $400 million in annual revenue, which could position the new firm to gain new investment or even go public.The Ligado fight isn’t over. A former Trump administration official reminds us that Ligado, a company that won access to a big tranche of spectrum from the FCC in 2020, is still viewed as a threat to the GPS system by many of its stakeholders. The DOD is still pushing for the telecom regulator to reconsider its decision, but it’s not clear that its at the top of the agency’s priority list.Atomic Origin. DARPA announced a new contract this week for research into nuclear space propulsion, which includes General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company. Blue’s job will be working with Lockheed to design a spacecraft suited to a nuclear rocket engine. Splitting atoms to fly in space is seen as hugely efficient and perhaps necessary for interstellar journeys, but the challenge is developing and testing such a technology safely.Your pal,TimThis was issue 92 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send novel concepts for space public-private partnerships, M&A maneuvering, tips, and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.Enjoying Space Business? Forward it to a friend! They can click here to sign up. If you’re looking to unsubscribe, click here.

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