A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launches one of NASA’s PREFIRE satellites from New Zealand on May 25. The satellite is one of two that will measure heat loss from Earth’s poles.
The first half of NASA‘s new mission to study the changing climate in the most extreme places on Earth is in orbit after launching from New Zealand.
On May 25, Rocket Lab launched the first of two shoebox-sized satellites as part of NASA’s Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) mission. NASA said ground control established communication with the CubeSat about an hour after it launched on the Electron rocket from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand.
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Once both satellites are in orbit, PREFIRE will measure the heat radiated into space from the Arctic and Antarctica using a thermal infrared spectrometer. Currently, there is no detailed measurement of this energy transfer, which influences Earth’s temperature and climate.
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launches NASA’s PREFIRE CubeSat from New Zealand on May 25, 2024.
Ahead of the launch, Tristan L’Ecuyer, PREFIRE principal investigator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the mission will close a knowledge gap by improving climate models that can help everyone who lives on Earth.
“We’ve had this lack of information about that very critical region of the spectrum, these longer wavelengths,” L’Ecuyer said. “The goal of working with the climate modeling team is to actually, once we make the observations directly, give them that information so that they can improve those aspects of the climate model and make sure that the model is doing what we’re observing from space.”
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Sea ice loss and sea level rise influence many industries worldwide, including farming, fishing and commercial fleets.
“What happens in the Arctic really does affect lives around the world and in pretty direct ways through weather and water availability and food security,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
With one satellite in orbit, NASA and Rocket Lab are determining the launch date for the second PREFIRE satellite. Mission managers said the second spacecraft would launch soon after the first.