NASA prepares for twin launches of climate science cubesats

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20-05-2024, 18:30

INA - SOURCES

NASA is gearing up for back-to-back launches of cubesats designed to provide key data for improving models of the Earth’s climate.

The first of twin cubesats for NASA’s Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment, or PREFIRE, mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than May 22 on an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. The other cubesat will be launched on another Electron within three weeks.

Each 6U cubesat carries a thermal infrared spectrometer based on technologies flown on several other spacecraft but repackaged to fit within the size and mass constrains of the cubesat. The instruments will collect information on emissions at far infrared wavelengths, longer than 15 microns, at the Earth’s poles.

The data, project and NASA officials said, "will help scientists better understand how much heat the Earth loses to space at the poles, which can be used to improve climate models."

“The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. That has huge potential consequences,” said Tristan L’Ecuyer, principal investigator for PREFIRE at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those consequences are both local and global, with the latter including sea level rise and broader weather systems.