NASA’s PREFIRE CubeSat has deployed from the Rocket Lab’s Electron kick stage. The team will seek signal acquisition from the PREFIRE CubeSat and provide confirmation on the agency website when a signal is acquired. This concludes NASA’s live launch coverage of the mission.
NASA’s PREFIRE mission will help close a gap in our understanding of how much of Earth’s heat is lost to space from the Arctic and Antarctica. Analysis of PREFIRE measurements will inform climate and ice models, providing better projections of how a warming world will affect sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise.
Each PREFIRE satellite is fitted with an instrument called a thermal infrared spectrometer. The instrument contains specially-shaped mirrors and detectors for splitting and measuring infrared light and will make its readings using a device called a thermocouple, similar to sensors found in household thermostats. PREFIRE’s objectives are to supply scientists with new data on a range of climate variables, including atmospheric temperature, surface properties, water vapor, and clouds.
NASA jointly developed PREFIRE with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and provided the instruments. Blue Canyon Technologies built the CubeSats, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is processing the data collected by the instruments. The science team includes members from JPL and the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the launch service as part of the agency’s VADR (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) launch services contract.
Follow NASA’s small satellite missions blog for updates on the second PREFIRE launch called PREFIRE and ICE. For more information on the Earth Science mission, visit https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/projects/prefire/.