WASP is a prototype EO data processor, developed in the frame of the ESA Discovery Campaign on Remote Sensing of Plastic Marine Litter, exploiting Copernicus Sentinel-2 L1C images to detect and catalogue the presence of filaments of floating marine debris with high probability of containing anthropogenic litter.

Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) are rapidly approaching market-readiness, with numerous partly-autonomous and teleoperated systems either under development or already performing operational demonstrations for applications such as bathymetric surveying (SEA-KIT Maxlimer, Deep BV), maintenance of offshore installations (Thales Halcyon), and commercial shipping (Yara Birkeland, Maersk VISTULA-Class).

The Mars Surface Platform Capabilities Study aimed to provide ESA with an assessment of the state of the art in Mars lander technologies using ESA/European technologies with flight heritage. Airbus’ Mars lander experience is taken from the Beagle 2 probe launched in 2003 on board Mars Express.

The objectives of the study were to:

The Project 'Plastic waste and the Black Sea, monitoring litter at sea and on the land from Sentinel-2 data' was funded by the Discovery element of ESA's Basic Activities, and it had the following objectives:

• To facilitate systematic marine debris detection by Earth observation for tracking them before they beach, if ever, by improving a detection algorithm already sketched and tested, and develop a true detector from it
• To test various methodologies for the detection and identification of terrestrial illegal dumping sites

In this report, we discuss the notion of value creation in space and the way it has been measured in recent years. We expose the limitations of the current framework for measuring the contribution of the public sector by academic literature and the European Space Agency (ESA), and examine the implications in terms of ESA's remits.

In this report we document the development and deployment of an individual hopper intended as a precursor survery mission for planetary exploration.

The main aim of OPTIMAL was to perform a feasibility study on a potential mission or system to detect marine plastic litter through satellite remote sensing. To do so, the project activities involved the following aspects:

The objective of the Aeolus/EarthCARE Aerosol Assimilation Studies (A3S) project was to allow assimilation of the Aeolus L2A lidar backscatter data, also paving the way for the assimilation of EarthCARE products. Since the Aeolus and EarthCARE missions were not yet launched at the time of the study, demonstration datasets based on model data (MOCAGE model for the aerosols and the IFS for the clouds) and a one-day dataset based on CALIPSO data (reprocessed at the UV wavelength and with the Aeolus orbit data) was created.

According to the United Nation Environment Program (2005), “Marine Litter” is defined as any item that has been made or used by people and deliberately or accidently discarded either directly into the sea or coast or transported from land into the marine environment.

There is increased attention being given to safeguarding Earth's orbital environment, as reflected by the number of relevant regulations that are being set forward by national governments and international organisations. Among others, ESA has published a Space Debris Mitigation Policy for Agency Projects (ESA/ADMIN/IPOL(2014)2), supported by the corresponding ESA Space Debris Mitigation Compliance Verification Guidelines (ESSB-HB-U-002).