Marine plastic litter was dumped into a realistic scale model of the Atlantic Ocean to test if space technologies would be able to detect it from orbit.
The best estimate is that an average 10 million tons of plastic enter the ocean annually – equivalent to a fresh truckload of plastic dumped every minute – but researchers only know what happens to about 1% of it. Satellite monitoring might in future help track its extent, and see where it goes – if it can be proven to work in practice.
“Our goal here is to answer a few fundamental questions,” says ESA antenna engineer Peter de Maagt, overseeing the campaign.
“To start with, can we detect floating plastics with space-based monitoring at all? And if so, which techniques show the most promise, at what frequency and with what sensitivity? Up until now researchers have had general gut feelings about what might work the best, but we are working to remove any guesswork.”
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Image via European Space Agency
