The first of two climate satellites intended to study heat emissions at Earth’s poles for NASA has successfully entered orbit. This followed its launch atop Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand, at 7:41 pm NZST (3:41 am EDT) on Saturday, as announced by NASA in a press release.
The PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission comprises two CubeSats, each the size of a shoebox, designed to measure the heat radiated by Earth into space from the coldest and most remote regions on the planet. The data gathered from this mission aims to enhance researchers’ ability to forecast changes in Earth’s ice, seas, and weather due to global warming.
“NASA’s innovative PREFIRE mission will fill a gap in our understanding of the Earth system – providing our scientists a detailed picture of how Earth’s polar regions influence how much energy our planet absorbs and releases,” stated Karen St Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington.
“This will improve prediction of sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise, creating a better understanding of how our planet’s system will change in the coming years — crucial information to farmers tracking changes in weather and water, fishing fleets working in changing seas, and coastal communities building resilience,” she added.
Ground controllers established communication with the CubeSat at 8:48 EDT. The second PREFIRE CubeSat is scheduled to launch on another Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 in the coming days. After a 30-day checkout period to ensure both CubeSats are functioning correctly, the mission is expected to last for 10 months, according to NASA.
The PREFIRE mission focuses on Earth’s energy budget—the balance between incoming solar energy and the heat the planet radiates back into space. This balance determines Earth’s temperature and climate. Although the Arctic and Antarctica emit a significant amount of heat as far-infrared radiation, there is currently no detailed measurement of this type of energy.
The amount of far-infrared radiation that escapes into space from Earth’s poles is influenced by atmospheric water vapor and the presence, structure, and composition of clouds. Data from PREFIRE will provide researchers with information on the locations and timings of far-infrared energy emissions from the Arctic and Antarctic regions into space.
“The PREFIRE CubeSats may be small, but they’re going to close a big gap in our knowledge about Earth’s energy budget,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Their observations will help us understand the fundamentals of Earth’s heat balance, allowing us to better predict how our ice, seas, and weather will change in the face of global warming.”
Each PREFIRE CubeSat is equipped with a thermal infrared spectrometer, which utilizes specially shaped mirrors and sensors to measure infrared wavelengths. The miniaturization required to fit these instruments on CubeSats involved reducing some parts while enlarging other components.
“Our planet is changing quickly, and in places like the Arctic, in ways that people have never experienced before,” said Tristan L’Ecuyer, PREFIRE’s principal investigator at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “NASA’s PREFIRE will give us new measurements of the far-infrared wavelengths being emitted from Earth’s poles, which we can use to improve climate and weather models and help people around the world deal with the consequences of climate change.”
NASA’s Launch Services Program, in collaboration with NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program, is providing the launch service as part of the Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract, as noted in the release.
The PREFIRE mission is a joint effort between NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NASA JPL manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate and provided the spectrometers. The CubeSats were built by Blue Canyon Technologies, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will process the data collected by the instruments. Rocket Lab USA Inc of Long Beach, California, is the launch services provider.
