Innovative Solution In Space (Netherlands)

Riverine litter pollution poses substantial environmental challenges, necessitating effective monitoring techniques to assess and mitigate this environmental impact. Existing methods for monitoring riverine litter vary widely in quality, cost, ease of implementation and performance. The difference of these factors for different monitoring techniques remains underexplored, limiting the ability to effectively monitor floating litter flux over long time periods.This study addresses this gap by evaluating four methods for riverine waste monitoring: (1) visual observations by human observers, (2) manual counting from camera images, (3) manual counting of AI-filtered camera images, and (4) fully automated AI-based counting of camera images. The evaluation focuses on two key objectives: assessing how well each method's recovery rate aligns with ground truth data and comparing plastic flux estimates derived from each method.To this end, experiments are conducted in a semi-controlled waterway (lock). During these experiments, plastic litter is released in the water at random intervals to simulate natural litter transport. Human observers located on a bridge over the water count the floating litter and record data using the JRC Floating Litter Monitoring app. Simultaneously, high-resolution cameras capture images of the floating litter for the three camera-based methods. The flux estimates, as well as the implementation and the scalability of the different methods will be compared, to assess their overall effectiveness in monitoring. The study will provide insights into the strengths and limitations of each monitoring method, offering a basis for selecting the most suitable approach for various scenarios. This comparative evaluation will bridge a critical research gap, contributing to the development of more efficient monitoring strategies for addressing plastic pollution in waterways.

Abstract In Australia, 9.4% of young people aged 15–24 are unemployed, more than double the national rate. The national employment services system in Australia has, however, not successfully tackled this issue. While some wraparound programs have been implemented to better address young people's needs, most are designed to find young people any job rather than being tailored towards a specific career. Despite governments encouraging solutions that involve cross‐sector collaboration with private businesses, the potential of industry‐specific solutions has been less well‐explored. Addressing this gap, this paper presents an in‐depth case study of how one major Australian construction company has implemented an industry‐specific collaborative wraparound program to address youth unemployment, called the Connectivity Centre model (CCM). The paper discusses the features of this model that make it distinctive compared to other programs supporting young people's employment. It also discusses how the policy context of social procurement (policies generating social value through procurement processes) and cross‐sector collaboration incentivise the model. The policy implications are explored, highlighting how models like the CCM offer a complementary alternative to other unemployment supports available to young jobseekers in Australia.Points for practitioners Social procurement policies incentivise private companies’ involvement in youth unemployment programs, including utilising their cross‐sector networks. Private companies’ involvement enables youth unemployment programs that reflect the same benefits as wraparound programs in intensive/personalised support while providing more industry specificity. This set of characteristics is unique and complementary within Australia's youth unemployment support landscape.

<p>In this contribution, we present the Twin ANthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Observers (TANGO) mission, which is one of four candidate missions of ESA’s SCOUT program for the rapid prototyping and demonstration of observation techniques and science application using small-satellites. Over the period 2024-2027, TANGO will provide the unique opportunity for the global and independent monitoring of the major emission sources of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases CH<sub>4</sub> and CO<sub>2</sub>. It will demonstrate a distributed monitoring system that can pave the way for future larger constellations of small-satellites allowing for enhanced coverage and temporal resolution. The TANGO mission consists of two agile small-satellites, each carrying one spectrometer flying in conjunction with the Copernicus Sentinel 5 mission. Regular joint TANGO and Sentinel 5 observations will be used to enhance the radiometric accuracy of the TANGO spectrometers. The first satellite measures spectral radiances in the shortwave infrared part of the solar spectrum (1.6 µm) to determine moderate to strong emissions of CH<sub>4</sub> (≥ 10 Kt/yr) and CO<sub>2</sub> (≥ 5 Mt/yr). The instrument has a field of view of 30 x 30 km<sup>2 </sup>at spatial resolutions small enough to monitor individual large industrial facilities (300 x 300 m<sup>2</sup>), with an accuracy to determine emissions on the basis of a single observation. Using the same strategy, the second satellite yields collocated NO<sub>2</sub> observations from radiance measurements in the visible spectral range, supporting plume detection and exploiting the use of CO<sub>2</sub>/NO<sub>2</sub> ratio observations to estimate CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from offshore NO<sub>2</sub> sources. TANGO will provide surface fluxes of specific emission types based on the combination of CH<sub>4</sub>, CO<sub>2</sub> and NO<sub>2</sub> observations at a high spatial resolution. In doing so, TANGO aims to uniquely complement the large current and planned Copernicus monitoring missions like Sentinel-5(P) and the CO2M High Priority Candidate Mission (HPCM) by providing unrivalled high-resolution monitoring of the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions at a regular basis.</p>

The UltraViolet and infrared Sensors at high Quantum efficiency onboard a small SATellite (UVSQ-SAT) mission aims to demonstrate pioneering technologies for broadband measurement of the Earth’s radiation budget (ERB) and solar spectral irradiance (SSI) in the Herzberg continuum (200–242 nm) using high quantum efficiency ultraviolet and infrared sensors. This research and innovation mission has been initiated by the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) with the support of the International Satellite Program in Research and Education (INSPIRE). The motivation of the UVSQ-SAT mission is to experiment miniaturized remote sensing sensors that could be used in the multi-point observation of Essential Climate Variables (ECV) by a small satellite constellation. UVSQ-SAT represents the first step in this ambitious satellite constellation project which is currently under development under the responsibility of the Laboratory Atmospheres, Environments, Space Observations (LATMOS), with the UVSQ-SAT CubeSat launch planned for 2020/2021. The UVSQ-SAT scientific payload consists of twelve miniaturized thermopile-based radiation sensors for monitoring incoming solar radiation and outgoing terrestrial radiation, four photodiodes that benefit from the intrinsic advantages of Ga 2 O 3 alloy-based sensors made by pulsed laser deposition for measuring solar UV spectral irradiance, and a new three-axis accelerometer/gyroscope/compass for satellite attitude estimation. We present here the scientific objectives of the UVSQ-SAT mission along the concepts and properties of the CubeSat platform and its payload. We also present the results of a numerical simulation study on the spatial reconstruction of the Earth’s radiation budget, on a geographical grid of 1 ° × 1 ° degree latitude-longitude, that could be achieved with UVSQ-SAT for different observation periods.

ABSTRACTThe RemoveDEBRIS mission has been the first mission to successfully demonstrate, in-orbit, a series of technologies that can be used for the active removal of space debris. The mission started late in 2014 and was sponsored by a grant from the EC that saw a consortium led by the Surrey Space Centre to develop the mission, from concept to in-orbit demonstrations, that terminated in March 2019. Technologies for the capture of large space debris, like a net and a harpoon, have been successfully tested together with hardware and software to retrieve data on non-cooperative target debris kinematics from observations carried out with on board cameras. The final demonstration consisted of the deployment of a drag-sail to increase the drag of the satellite to accelerate its demise.

This paper presents a software-defined testbed to perform hardware-in-the-loop test of miniaturized coherent transponders. Such a setup has been designed to minimize the access threshold for future users, heavily relying on available open source applications and commercial hardware, targeting future coherent transponders for interplanetary CubeSats. The paper presents the overall architecture of the testbed, a tradeoff to select the most suited development framework and the detailed design of the different blocks. Upcoming interplanetary CubeSat missions that would require a coherent transponder are also presented to highlight the need sof such a system. Software qualification, given the use of third-party software with multiple developers, was also addressed to guarantee performances can be consistent and reliable.