Emmanuel Boss, Ph.D., University of Maine
For 50 days during the 2026 Austral summer (January to March), the PlanktoSpace team of 18 scientists, crew members, and passengers set sail on a unique mission. Our expedition traveled 7,200 miles across the Southern Ocean aboard the Perseverance, a sailing vessel owned by a French non-profit dedicated to science and education. Because the Perseverance uses sails for most of its journey, the expedition was environmentally friendly and cost-effective. In fact, the fuel used for our entire 50-day trip was roughly the same amount a typical large research ship burns in just a single day.
PlanktoSpace included scientists from NASA, the European Space Agency, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), and the University of Maine. Our main goal was to study the health of the marine protected areas. While we kept a close eye on famous locals—like leopard seals and penguins—we were also there to study the “base” of the ocean’s food web: plankton. These tiny, drifting organisms are the lifeblood of the sea. Just as different trees change the look of a forest, different plankton communities change the color of the water. That’s why data from NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission can be used to distinguish different phytoplankton in the ocean.
During this expedition we used a suite of instruments to measure the color of the ocean, helping us to better understand how sunlight interacts with plankton and other materials in the ocean. In the map below, you can see the concentration of chlorophyll, the green pigment found in all phytoplankton (and land plants), and how it changed along our path. The map color scale shows that the amount of life in the water changed dramatically—up to 100 times over—as we traveled between New Zealand, Antarctica, and Australia. We had to weave through sea ice and navigate around the most dangerous winds and waves to keep the ship and crew safe. Rough seas can be seen in our data; the little breaks in the colorful track lines mark the periods when the seas were so rough that air bubbles got into our sensors, making accurate readings impossible.
In addition to instrument measurements, we collected additional water samples, including material for genetic analysis, during the period when PACE, a NASA satellite launched in 2024, passed overhead. Our samples will be used for PACE validation, the process of comparing in situ measurements with what PACE observes from space. The entire crew pitched in to collect this important dataset, especially on those clear-sky days when the satellites had the best view of our work from above.
This was not all. Perseverance was equipped with instruments that allowed us to track microplastics and other manmade changes in the water and air. We also tested a new smartphone app (iSPEX Water) and attachment designed so that citizen scientists can take surface-level water measurements that integrate with those collected by NASA’s satellites.
Ultimately, the majority of the data collected during the Perseverance’s expedition to the Southern Ocean will be submitted to the relevant NASA databases to allow scientists from all around the world to better use space technology to monitor the health of our oceans from Earth orbit.
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