The millions of tonnes of plastic ending up in the oceans every year are a global challenge. ESA is responding by looking at the detection of marine plastic litter from space, potentially charting its highest concentrations and understanding the gigantic scale of the problem.

ESA funded 25 innovative projects to improve detection of plastic marine litter from space, through the Discovery Campaign 'Remote Sensing of Plastic Marine Litter', launched on the ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP).

"The projects address different problems, solutions and approaches, from using existing remote sensing technology in novel applications, to exploring new technologies to monitor marine litter, through developing new data processing, modelling and experimental techniques including approaches based on artificial intelligence," says Paolo Corradi, ESA systems engineer.

"The projects also cover different geographical areas, including places like southeast Asia where the problem of marine litter is huge, and as well as oceans they touch upon rivers, seas and even land. The important factor is that every project has the potential to improve our ability to monitor floating plastic from space, and thus provide the data necessary to propose appropriate solutions," continues Paolo.