Just a couple weeks after the launch of their latest greenhouse gas emissions detection satellite, GHGSat has released the Iris “first light” data showing a large plume in Turkmenistan. Also this past week, the company was named the Company of the Year by the Alberta based industry group TECTERRA.
According to TECTERRA the “awards were developed to create a platform to celebrate the leaders and technological disruptions in geospatial.” This is the tenth anniversary of the awards. GHGSat was up against Waterloo based MappedIn and Calgary based SensorUp.
GHGSat-C1 (Iris) first light
In an interview with the BBC on the first data collected from Iris satellite, GHGSat CEO Stéphane Germain said “let me tell you there was a big hurrah from the team when the data came down because we could see the spectroscopy was there, the resolution was there – everything was as it should be. We still need to work on the calibration, which will then allow us to verify the detection threshold and the final performance of the satellite. But as a first-light image – by any standard it’s phenomenal.”
GHGSat will also be providing 5% of the data from Iris satellite to the Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency (ESA) for free. This past week ESA highlighted waste management as an example of how the data will be.
It’s been a good month for GHGSat. Along with the launch of their second satellite, the TECTERRA award, the company also announced $30 million in Series B funding. That funding will allow them to build three more satellites as well as airborne sensors.
The company will launch its next satellite, Hugo, in December if the launch schedule holds.