Skip to main content

Researchers use satellites to track ocean microplastics from space

Environmentalists have been raising awareness about the problems caused by microplastics in the oceans — tiny pieces of plastic which can harm marine animals and damage ecosystems. But it’s hard to say how widespread the issue is, as it’s difficult to track all of the plastic in the ocean.

Now, researchers are using a NASA satellite to track how plastics move throughout the ocean. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) is a set of eight small satellites that was, as the name suggests, designed to track hurricanes and to understand the formation of storms. But researchers at the University of Michigan realized they could use data from the satellite system to both track microplastics on a global scale and to zoom into specific areas to get high-resolution data.

“We’re still early in the research process, but I hope this can be part of a fundamental change in how we track and manage microplastic pollution,” said senior author Chris Ruf.

Illustration of one of the eight CYGNSS satellites in orbit above a hurricane.
Illustration of one of the eight CYGNSS satellites in orbit above a hurricane. NASA

The satellites were already measuring the roughness of the ocean surface as part of their hurricane monitoring job. Ruf and his colleagues realized they could take this existing data and identify areas that looked smoother than they should, given the wind speed. This correlates well with the presence of microplastic, letting them track this issue globally.

“We’d been taking these radar measurements of surface roughness and using them to measure wind speed, and we knew that the presence of stuff in the water alters its responsiveness to the environment,” Ruf said. “So I got the idea of doing the whole thing backward, using changes in responsiveness to predict the presence of stuff in the water.”

The results show that the concentration of microplastics changes with the seasons, and converges in places like the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They also found a high concentration of microplastics at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia. This area had previously been thought to be a primary source of microplastics, but this new evidence shows the problem in action.

“It’s one thing to suspect a source of microplastic pollution, but quite another to see it happening,” Ruf said. “The microplastics data that has been available in the past has been so sparse, just brief snapshots that aren’t repeatable.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA may use a ‘space tug’ to decommission the space station
The space station and Earth.

NASA is aiming to build a special spacecraft capable of guiding the International Space Station to a safe deorbit position when it’s decommissioned in 2030.

Details of the plan were laid out in recent days when the White House released its budget request for 2024.

Read more
Four Crew-5 astronauts return home safe from International Space Station
Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, left, NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, right, are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship Shannon shortly after having landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, Saturday, March 11, 2023. Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikina are returning after 157 days in space as part of Expedition 68 aboard the International Space Station.

A crew of four astronauts has returned safely to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), splashing down  in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, late on Saturday, March 13. The Crew-5 astronauts traveled in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and made a parachute-assisted splashdown at 9:02 p.m. ET (6:02 p.m. PT), at which point, they were picked up using a recovery ship and taken back to Tampa to catch a plane to Houston.

The crew consisted of NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, plus Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. The four have spent nearly six months on the orbiting space station, working on projects including scientific research and spacewalks to upgrade space station hardware.

Read more
Researchers design a ‘space salad’ to keep astronauts healthy and happy
A salad created to provide nutrition for astronauts based on foods which can be grown in space.

When it comes to imagining food in space, the first thing that's likely to cross most people's minds is freeze-dried products like astronaut ice cream. And while preserved foods will inevitably be a part of astronaut's diets for the foreseeable future, nowadays there's an increasing focus on how to provide astronauts with fresh foods like vegetables and grains for at least occasional treats.

Eating fresh foods is important not only for physical health reasons, but also for astronauts' mental health. Repetitive, processed meals can be unappetizing and lead to what is called menu fatigue, in which astronauts don't want to eat because they are so sick of having the same foods over and over. And that can be a real problem when astronauts are losing weight and not getting enough nutrients.

Read more