In what is considered to be a New Zeeland first, our agriculture will now be monitored from space.
In just a few days, satellite MethaneSAT will be launching from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to keep a watchful eye on climate change.
The satellite, which is primarily funded by the US Environmental Defence Fund, will help the Americans look for leaks from oil and gas production.
New Zealand has contributed almost $30 million to the satellite.
"It's something that's never really been done before — agricultural missions from space," NIWA carbon chemistry and modelling scientist Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher said.
There are other satellites in space looking for methane emissions, but MethaneSAT is different from the rest: it scans 200km by 200km patches.
This means the readings will have higher sensitivity readings and higher certainty data — which may help in the fight against climate change.
"This is my life's work, it's my passion, I've dreamed of doing something like this since I was a child," Mikaloff-Fletcher said.
Greenhouse gases and meteorology senior researcher Johannes Laubach said it's "very important" for New Zealand to "come up with ways of making this production associated with lower methane emissions and show the world how it can be done".
The Auckland University Space Institute's mission operations centre director Chris Jackson said this satellite can help New Zealand build infrastructure "to support hopefully not just the MethaneSAT but also other missions in [the] future".
The satellite will be in space for four years — and potentially longer.
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