TU Delft

To track the status of Biodiversity conservation and restoration effects, new satellite remote sensing technologies are required. To this purpose, the Quantative and Terrestrial Remote Sensing (QUARTS) lab and the Space instrumentation Laboratory at the TU Delft have joint forces to explore how Spectro-Polarimetry can be used for leaf inclination distribution functions, an essential biodiversity variables that so far has remained illusive.

To explore how such satellite technology could be used for additional research, 16 students from both Civil Engineering and Geoscience and Aerospace Engineering participated in a Talent Hackathon (organised at the Amsterdam Space Symposium) to design a mission based on spectro-polarimetry.

With expert guidance from experts from the TU Delft, Leiden University, Erasmus University and SRON, 3 distinct mission concepts were created and pitched to space entrepeneurs at the ASS2026.