Space Minister Judith Collins goes to ground over alleged government failures managing NZ's first space mission

RNZ News

13 hours ago

Space Minister Judith Collins.
Photo:
VNP / Phil Smith
Space Minister Judith Collins has gone to ground over alleged government failures managing New Zealand's first official, taxpayer-funded satellite mission.
Last year, Collins welcomed the launch of MethaneSAT as "a milestone in the development of New Zealand's space sector".
However, since the methane-hunting satellite lost communication with its owners, she has refused to answer questions on whether there would be any form of review of New Zealand's involvement in the mission.
RNZ has learned that a senior astrophysicist wrote to government officials in March warning the public was being given a "materially incomplete" picture.
MethaneSAT says it has been "truthful and open" in disclosing the spacecraft's operational issues.
New Zealand spent $32 million being part of the mission led by US non-profit the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to find and share hidden sources of methane emissions. The government paid for both Rocket Lab and Auckland University to establish mission control centres, with the goal that Rocket Lab would handle the console initially before handing over to the university so staff and students could get hands-on experience.
The satellite became unresponsive in June after just 15 months in orbit, before students could reap the benefits of the investment.
Artist's rendering of MethaneSAT, the satellite EDF developed.
Photo:
Supplied / Environmental Defence Fund
In a more detailed statement than previously provided, MethaneSAT says the spacecraft used a new type of thruster technology (which steers the spacecraft and keeps it at the right height) and that, combined with frequent bouts spent in "safe mode" early in the mission, were time-consuming and labour-intensive for the ground operations crew. It says "operational activities" meant the satellite was not able to spend as much time downlinking data as it had hoped for early in the mission. The mission was supposed to last five years. The cause of the spacecraft's demise isn't yet known.
Several experts RNZ has spoken to in the space industry lamented the choice to spend tens of millions being involved in a third party project, rather than making the country's first space mission something designed and launched from New Zealand.
Political leaders declined to front on calls for a thorough review.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has blamed Labour for overseeing the initial investment and referred follow-up questions to Collins. That's despite the launch and orbit happening under the current government.
Collins has repeatedly refused to comment and referred all questions, including questions abut whether the government would hold a review, to the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which houses the country's Space Agency.
A snapshot of methane data collected from the Uinta Basin on a beta version of the data platform shows how an area's methane emissions correlate with oil and gas infrastructure.
Photo:
Supplied / Environmental Defence Fund
The Space Agency, meanwhile, said it had no reason to doubt the judgement of the "seasoned professionals" involved in choosing and building the spacecraft.
However, a former employee of Rocket Lab, which operated the satellite's mission control for the first year after launch, has said there was a failure to select the right spacecraft manufacturer and a failure "to focus on the right level of technical rigor [sic] pre launch", and during assembly and testing.
Leigh Foster said he and his former team spent many late nights and weekends developing a system to operate and control the satellite but they "never really got to prove to ourselves how impressive it really was" after the satellite was lost in space, before handover to the University of Auckland.
Foster's comments were made on LinkedIn. When contacted by RNZ he said he was not able to comment further.
Former Rocket Lab employee Leigh Foster.
Photo:
Supplied / LinkedIn
Astrophysicist Richard Easther wrote to government officials in March warning them that they were allowing the public to be given a "materially incomplete" picture about the spacecraft's status.
MBIE replied to him saying it was not responsible for statements to the media about MethaneSAT.
Easther now says the ministry was "played like a fiddle" over the country's first official space mission.
But MethaneSAT says it was truthful and open in disclosing the problems, which included ground crews grappling with operating a new type of, labour-intensive thruster. It maintains the issues were not out of the ordinary.
The ministry says it was limited on what it could say in public due to "obligations of confidence and commercial confidentiality".
However Easther says MBIE should not have signed up to any deal that prevented it being transparent with taxpayers on the fate of their money.
Astrophysicist Richard Easther.
Photo:
supplied
Easther's letters to MBIE in March queried statements by MethaneSAT's owners, EDF, to RNZ in October 2024, when RNZ was told there were no significant issues with the satellite.
The statement was issued after discussions between MBIE, MethaneSAT's owners (EDF) and Crown research institute NIWA (now Earth Sciences NZ) over
how to respond to RNZ's queries
to all three organisations, with MethaneSAT/EDF directing the final answers.
Less than three months after that statement, MethaneSAT missed a planned deadline for handing the console to the University of Auckland.
MBIE did not answer questions on why, and official information requests came back heavily redacted.
Then, in March, MethaneSAT announced it was temporarily transferring control to Blue Canyon to address challenges and improve efficiency. MBIE offered
no further explanation
.
That prompted astronomer Michele Bannister of the University of Canterbury to call for future taxpayer funding for space missions to be subject to competition, with clear and transparent milestones.
In May, in response to specific questions from RNZ, MethaneSAT acknowledged the spacecraft had been regularly having to be
restarted from safe mode
using a time-consuming process.
It said handover to University of Auckland was on track for no later than June.
The spacecraft lost contact with the ground on June 20.
University of Canterbury planetary astronomer, Dr Michele Bannister.
Photo:
University of Canterbury
Easther told MBIE that the hand-back to Blue Canyon made MethaneSAT's earlier statements to RNZ difficult to trust.
He said there was concern in the space community that "there has never been an extended period in which the satellite had "no issues"".
He also said there was "deep concern in the space research community that the level of openness about the status of the mission ... falls far short of any reasonable expectations for a mission that has received substantial public money".
The letters added that this was a comparatively small satellite and not particularly complex by space mission standards, so the fact that it had taken 18 months to commission was unusual and pointed to likely future problems.
Easther said MBIE it should not have allowed MethaneSAT to tell RNZ and the public "that the spacecraft was essentially working normally".
MBIE responded to him that MethaneSAT was unlike any prior New Zealand science investment and brought obligations of confidentiality and commercial sensitivity "not found in other programmes".
On the question of whether MethaneSAT had given accurate statements to RNZ, it said simply that: "MethaneSAT LLC has overall responsible for the status of the mission and related media queries".
Mahima Seth and Vernon Lewis watch the launch of the MethaneSAT satellite at Mission Control, University of Auckland.
Photo:
Alexia Russell/The Detail
MBIE has responded to criticism of its handling of New Zealand's investment, including the alleged failure to properly disclose problems or "look under the hood" before launch.
That last criticism was from Associate Professor in physics Dr Nick Rattenbury, who wrote in a
post-mortem of the mission
that "New Zealand has more talent and good research ideas than funding to support them" and that "one could reasonably ask to what extent experts were consulted during the decision-making process to invest in the satellite mission, and who was applying due diligence on behalf of New Zealand taxpayers".
The deputy head of the Space Agency said MBIE had been actively involved and "well across the challenges the mission has faced".
Andrew Johnson said the spacecraft provider "was selected by the Environmental Defense Fund / MethaneSAT LLC before MBIE joined the mission".
"The teams at MethaneSAT and Environmental Defense Fund worked with some of the most seasoned professionals in the commercial and government aerospace sectors. We had no reason to doubt their judgement," he said.
As for informing taxpayers about the problems, he said the agency had been limited on what it could say due to "obligations of confidence and commercial confidentiality".
"We anticipated reflecting on lessons learned from our first active space mission involvement ... and we'll be gathering those lessons in the coming months," said Johnson.
Associate Professor in physics Dr Nick Rattenbury.
Photo:
RNZ / Claire Concannon
MethaneSAT pointed out that it did acknowledge delays in commissioning the thrusters in October, when RNZ asked about apparent delays to the flow of methane readings.
In October it told RNZ "the process as a whole has taken longer than we hoped, but there were no notable or particular complications outside the realm of what would be anticipated".
"Again, there is a lot of new technology on this mission, both hardware and software.
"For instance, commissioning our thrusters went slower than planned because they are a new model and the vendor was modifying their checkout procedure for us as we were going along.
"As of now there are no issues with the satellite or its data collection performance."
It is not clear whether the earlier problems were linked to the spacecraft's demise, which is
still being investigated
.
MethaneSAT strongly denied giving RNZ incomplete information.
"MethaneSAT has been truthful and open in disclosing the operational issues experienced by the spacecraft early in the MethaneSAT mission," said spokesperson Jon Coifman.
"Every spacecraft discovers things which work differently in space than planned, requiring updates to procedures, processes, and software. MethaneSAT was no different," he said.
MethaneSAT Global Media Unit associate vice president Jon Coifman.
Photo:
Supplied / MethaneSAT
Coifman also shared new details about the safe mode and thruster issues.
"MethaneSAT did have a number of safe mode entries early in the mission," he said.
"This was due to two factors.
"The onboard fault detection and management software was set with very conservative limits at launch. This is standard operating procedure. After time in orbit and experience gained from operations, those limits were relaxed to reduce the number of "false positives" that trigger safe mode. Those updates were implemented over the second half of 2024," he said.
The second factor was that a particularly active solar cycle also triggered "safe modes", he said.
"When this happens, the onboard fault detection software places the spacecraft into safe mode for the ground operators to assess and reset the required electronics. These ... events continued throughout the life of MethaneSAT as the high solar activity continued. MethaneSAT was not designed with the costly radiation-hardened components found, for example, on military spacecraft," said Coifman.
"Regardless of the cause, safe mode requires the ground operations team to perform time-consuming recovery steps," he said.
"This too was intentional at the start of the mission (again as it is with every satellite) to ensure a human reviewed each event and confirmed there was nothing more serious or new which required further study.
"One objective in handing the satellite to Blue Canyon was to automate much of this recovery to reduce the amount of time required."
The MethaneSAT device delivered by a SpaceX rocket on March 5, 2024
Photo:
©2024 Ball Aerospace
Coifman also provided new details on challenges faced using the thrusters.
"The thrusters on MethaneSAT are relatively new technology. As such, they are more labor [sic] intensive to operate, and have [been] a learning curve for the mission operations team who may be more familiar with other types of thrusters," he said.
RNZ has previously revealed there were urgent discussions between MethaneSAT, MBIE and Rocket Lab about updates to staffing levels required to operate the spacecraft, during the time Rocket Lab was on the console.
The university also required $3 million more than planned to keep staff employed during delays, taking the cost to New Zealand from $29m to $32m.
Coifman added, "The thrusters were operational before and after the handover to Blue Canyon. As with the safe mode recovery, a primary objective for Blue Canyon was to provide more automation in thruster operations to reduce the workload on the mission operators."
He said MethaneSAT was fully tested before launch according to best-practices and protocols established by NASA and the commercial spaceflight industry.
"There is no reason to believe that additional testing would have addressed the typical operational issues experienced by MethaneSAT on orbit," he said.
MethaneSAT was set to target areas all over the globe to analyse, concentrating on oil and gas pipelines.
Photo:
MethaneSAT
RNZ asked Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at a media appearance last week whether there would be a review of New Zealand's investment, to avoid a repeat of any mistakes.
"To be clear, this was a decision by the previous Labour government not my government. That's an issue now for MBIE to respond to," he said.
Asked if he had spoken to Collins, he said: "I haven't but MBIE is the right place for that to be discussed."
RNZ followed up with Luxon's office and clarified that criticism from the local space industry covered the failure to monitor and inform the public about the delays, which happened under the current government.
Although the decision to invest was made under Labour, the satellite's launch and time in orbit happened under the current coalition.
Luxon's office referred questions to Collins, who, for the second time in as many months, refused to comment.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is blaming the previous Labour-led government.
Photo:
RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Easther said Collins should be asking questions, given she had previously answered to Parliament about delays.
In March, Collins answered a series of Parliamentary questions from the Green Party about whether she was aware of any delays in the mission.
She referred to delays to the launch date, but did not refer to any issues or delays relating to the satellite's operation once it was in orbit. She said the mission had been returning "high quality data since launch".
Collins was also asked why there had been delays handing control to the University of Auckland.
She said control had been temporarily transferred to Blue Canyon Technologies to enable the manufacturer to address "challenges which are affecting the satellite's operation" without offering detail.
Asked about suggestions of staffing issues, Collins said: "I am aware that MBIE officials are engaging with MethaneSAT partners on New Zealand's support for the mission. Staffing requirements are part of these routine conversations."
The extra $3 million payment from MBIE to the university emerged later.
Easther said the Minister's answers were incomplete.
"When these answers were written it was a full year since MethaneSAT was launched and in that time it published just a few percent of the data we would have expected if it was working as planned," he said.
"On top of this, they had just announced the unplanned return of control to Blue Canyon for trouble-shooting - it was clear to everyone watching that there were major delays and hardware issues but you can't learn that from the Minister's answers.
"Likewise, nobody has ever doubted that the detector was working - it is the "bread and butter" parts of the spacecraft that failed."
Ops engineers Mahima Seth and Vernon Lewis at the University of Auckland's mission control centre.
Photo:
University of Auckland
RNZ asked Mahima Fisher, the leader of the Auckland University's mission control team, what would happen to the team and its facilities now that it will not drive MethaneSAT.
She said she had been given a chance to learn from commanding and controlling the satellite during preparations for handover, but was "was very disappointed that I could not be a bigger part of the mission".
Fisher said the mission control centre would "continue to exist as a physical space to operate future missions. However, the discussions about the future of the operations team are ongoing".
She said students had got to carry out mission planning for MethaneSAT, "which was a unique, powerful and inspiring experience" ... and that MethaneSAT did collect data over the last few months.
"I hope we take the time to reflect honestly on this mission, whatever that looks like," said Fisher.
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