An $88 million satellite backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos is lost in space. MethaneSAT, designed to sniff out sources of methane emissions across the globe, only survived about 15 months in Earth’s orbit before meeting its untimely end.

The satellite was part of groundbreaking efforts to track methane pollution and make information public. Capping methane leaks is one of the quickest ways to tackle global warning, say scientists, and MethaneSAT was a publicly-available global map of emissions.

A n $88m satellite designed to detect releases of the planet-warming gas methane from oil and gas production, has been lost in space in a major setback for climate efforts. The MethaneSat satellite which had backing from Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, was launched only last year aboard an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket.