NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission will fly a pair of shoebox-size cube satellites, or CubeSats, that will measure the amount of heat Earth radiates into space from two of the coldest, most remote regions on the planet – Earth’s polar regions.
At the heart of the PREFIRE mission is Earth’s energy budget – the balance between incoming heat energy from the Sun and the outgoing heat given off by the planet. The difference between the two is what determines the planet’s temperature and climate. A lot of the heat radiated from the Arctic and Antarctica is emitted as far-infrared radiation, but there is currently no detailed measurement of this type of energy.
The water vapor content of the atmosphere, along with the presence, structure, and composition of clouds, influences the amount of far-infrared radiation that escapes into space from Earth’s poles. Data collected from PREFIRE will give researchers information on where and when far-infrared energy radiates from the Arctic and Antarctic environments into space.
The PREFIRE mission features miniaturized thermal infrared spectrometers on both CubeSat satellites. Once deployed, the CubeSats will settle into a polar orbit to measure far-infrared emissions and how they change throughout the day and over seasons. The observations will allow scientists to assess how changes in thermal infrared emissions at the top of Earth’s atmosphere are related to changes in cloud cover and surface conditions below, such as the amount of sea ice and meltwater on the surface of the ice.
NASA’s PREFIRE mission will fill a gap in our understanding of how much of Earth’s heat is lost to space from the polar regions. By capturing measurements over the poles that can only be gathered from space, PREFIRE will enable researchers to systematically study the planet’s heat emissions in the far-infrared – with 10 times finer wavelength resolution than any previous sensor.
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