Media Teleconference - October 25, 2022
NASA leaders and EMIT science team members discuss the instrument’s ability to detect methane from space.
NASA will host a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. PDT) Tuesday, Oct. 25, to discuss the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation’s (EMIT) detection of methane super-emitters from orbit, a crucial, new capability that can lead to mitigation of emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
Audio of the teleconference, as well as supporting images, will livestream on NASA’s website.
The teleconference participants will include:
- Karen St. Germain, Earth Science Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Robert Green, EMIT principal investigator, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
- Andrew Thorpe, research technologist, JPL
- Kirt Costello, chief scientist, NASA’s International Space Station Program, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas
The public can submit questions on social media during the teleconference using #AskNASA.
Karen St. Germain
K1
EMIT, shown in the red circle, was launched to the International Space Station on July 14 and installed about 10 days later.
Robert Green
R1
This image shows a 2-mile (3-kilometer) long plume of methane southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is much more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
R2
East of Hazar, Turkmenistan, a port city on the Caspian Sea, 12 plumes of methane stream westward. The plumes were detected by NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission and some of them stretch for more than 20 miles (32 kilometers).
R3
A methane plume at least 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) long billows into the atmosphere south of Tehran, Iran. The plume, detected by NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission, comes from a major landfill, where methane is a byproduct of decomposition.
Andrew Thorpe
A1
The cube (left) shows methane plumes (purple, orange, yellow) over Turkmenistan. The rainbow colors are the spectral fingerprints from corresponding spots in the front image. The blue line in the graph (right) shows the methane fingerprint detected by EMIT; the red line is the expected fingerprint.