CHINA is ramping up the use of space technology to meet its ambitious carbon reduction pledges, marking the latest move with a cargo spacecraft that sent a greenhouse gas monitoring payload to the Chinese space station on Monday.
Among the payload delivered to orbit by the Tianzhou-10 cargo spacecraft is a lightweight, high-resolution greenhouse-gas point-source detection instrument, spearheaded by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Designed for external mounting, the device can measure carbon dioxide and methane concentrations at key emission sources across the globe’s mid-to-low latitudes. This will provide reliable, accurate, and high-frequency data to support greenhouse gas monitoring, reporting and verification.
“This equipment will provide robust data support for China’s ‘dual carbon’ initiatives and contribute Chinese wisdom to the global response against climate change,” the National Space Science Centre under the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
China has set the dual carbon goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
Monday’s orbital payload marks China’s latest move in leveraging space technology for carbon monitoring. Just last month, the country launched a satellite into orbit for high-precision greenhouse gas detection.
Equipped with an atmospheric lidar, the satellite is the world’s first to conduct synergistic active-passive greenhouse gas detection.
In April 2022, China launched an atmospheric environment monitoring satellite equipped with lidar. By July 2024, it achieved high-precision detection of the carbon dioxide column concentration at 1 ppm and operated globally around the clock. China placed its inaugural global CO2 monitoring satellite, TanSat, into a sun-synchronous orbit in 2016, paving the way for research into the global carbon cycle. Following this milestone, Chinese research teams have utilized the satellite’s data to foster scientific partnerships, including a notable collaboration with a team from Finland. — Xinhu