Last Saturday, the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup dispatched a device to help clean up litter in the Pacific Ocean. NPR's Michel Martin talks with Boyan Slat, the young CEO who came up with the idea.

The evaluation of very large amounts of data is becoming increasingly relevant in ocean research. Diving robots or autonomous underwater vehicles that carry out measurements independently in the deep sea can now record large quantities of high-resolution images. To evaluate these images scientifically in a sustainable manner, a number of prerequisites have to be fulfilled in data acquisition, curation and data management. "Over the past three years, we have developed a standardized workflow that makes it possible to scientifically evaluate large amounts of image data systematically and sustainably," explains Dr. Timm Schoening from the Deep Sea Monitoring working group headed by Prof. Dr. Jens Greinert at GEOMAR. The ABYSS autonomous underwater vehicle was equipped with a new digital camera system to study the ecosystem around manganese nodules in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX is getting it done. The Elon Musk-founded company just launched and then landed another of its newly upgraded Falcon 9 rocket boosters. SEE ALSO: SpaceX makes beautiful pre-dawn rocket landing at sea. The rocket carrying a clutch of communications satellites launched them on their way to orbit from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:39 a.m. ET before the first stage of the booster came back in for a landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean about 10 minutes later.

Researchers hoping to deploy a 600-meter plastic-sweeper to the Pacific Ocean to clean up the notorious floating Great Garbage Patch have revealed the final design for their contraption. The gigantic'pac man' system consists of a 600-meter-long floating tube that sits at the surface of the water, with a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below to catch plastic waste. It harnesses the power of wind and surface waves to autonomously sweep through the area, gathering up plastic waste as it goes. The gigantic'pac man' system consists of a 600-meter-long floater that sits at the surface of the water, with a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below to catch plastic waste. In the water, the'pac man' will catch plastic in a skirt, which will be emptired by a boat every few weeks Ocean Cleanup Project was forced to radically redesign the system after tests of their original system found it moved too much due to waves.

I was NASA's chief orbital technician, as the agency was changing its name to NAIA, the National Artificial Intelligence Administration, responsible for de-orbiting the International Space Station. The ISS name itself was a misnomer, coined when the space program was sliding from dream toward delusion. By definition, space stations are orbital facilities where astronauts transfer from Earth-launch vehicles to interplanetary ships intended for, say, the first human expedition to Mars, which indeed never took place. Having accomplished little worthwhile scientific research since its 1998 launch, the ISS was primarily a propaganda tool, pretending the technologically advanced nations of the world had become partners and that humanity had a glorious future in outer space. After decades of indecision, the alternatives now were to find a new purpose for the ISS and boost it to a higher orbit or crash it back to Earth at a safe location in the vast Pacific Ocean.

This terrifying footage shows what it would be like to be eaten by a great white shark. Researchers got more than they bargained for when a great white shark took a bite of the underwater camera drone they were using to film in the Pacific Ocean. The resulting footage shows a shark powering through the water, before attempting to swallow the drone in a single bite. Inside the mouth of the predator, the camera continues to film and shows the muscles inside the shark's jaw contracting with effort. The shark eventually spits out the camera and swims away, defeated.

Marketing has been evolving from a discipline based on gut instincts to one relying on empirical data. In fact, marketing today is almost completely driven by data, and companies are collecting oceans of it, literally. By 2020, the world will have accumulated 44 zettabytes of information, up from 10 zettabytes in 2015, according to market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). To put those numbers into context, one zettabyte of apples would fill the Pacific Ocean.

Hey there, SpaceX: We get it. The Elon Musk-founded spaceflight company launched 10 Iridium communications satellites into space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in the predawn darkness from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday. The successful deployment of each satellite has not yet occurred, however. Following the launch, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket booster onto a drone ship, named "Just Read the Instructions," in the Pacific Ocean. Monday marked SpaceX's 17th landing of a Falcon 9 rocket booster, which have taken place on both coasts and at sea and on land.

Photography and video equipment brought along by an Associated Press team on assignment aboard the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica is laid out on the ship's deck Saturday July 8, 2017, while sailing toward the Bering Strait in the North Pacific Ocean. The AP is accompanying a group of international researchers is sailing into the Arctic Sea aboard the Finnish icebreaker to traverse the Northwest Passage and record the environmental and social changes that are taking place in one of the most forbidding corners of the world.

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