Seeing Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Researchers Use the Tanager Satellite to Detect Ammonia From Space

Planet’s Tanager-1 satellite, equipped with a VSWIR hyperspectral sensor developed with Carbon Mapper and NASA JPL, achieved the first successful detection of point-source ammonia using shortwave infrared (SWIR) imaging spectroscopy from orbit. A peer-reviewed study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated ammonia detection from individual industrial sources in Pakistan and Uzbekistan using Tanager-1 data, expanding the satellite’s role beyond greenhouse gas monitoring into co-pollutant detection relevant to both climate and public health.