Nebula Public Library

The main objectives of the REACT project were to:
▪ Assess how plastic litter can be detected and quantified with current and future remote sensing tools;
▪ Develop adaptive indices insensible to biases induced by sunglint on satellite radiometric products and indicate the constraints of current satellite missions under various atmospheric and illumination conditions;

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

The aim of this study was to explore and consolidate the possible sources of methane biases in retrievals from thermal infrared sensors, to establish necessary actions and perform the related work for mitigating biases. The study distinguishes three types of error sources, which shall be covered: spectroscopic knowledge and input data to radiative transfer models, forward model errors, and instrument biases.

Developing a high-performance, but low cost satellite with very high resolution products would open the Earth Observation market to a new audience, creating a path for new applications and ultimately encouraging competitiveness.

These products are currently not often covered by the space industry and access is very limited. As such a new low cost satellite, with turnkey technology could open the market considerably. A new activity, with GSTP Element 2 and Spain, has developed a spacecraft to do just that.