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NASA is set to launch the first of two research satellites to measure how much heat is lost to space in the Arctic and Antarctica.
The shoebox-sized satellite should take off on Saturday aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the Rocket Lab launch complex in Mahia, New Zealand, during a window that opens at 7:15 p.m. local time (3:15 a.m. ET).
The climate science mission, known as Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment, or PREFIRE, aims to improve scientists’ understanding of how water vapor, clouds and other elements in Earth’s atmosphere trap heat and prevent it from radiating. into space.
The data collected will inform climate models and will hopefully lead to better predictions about how the climate crisis will affect sea levels, weather, snow and ice cover, NASA said.
The Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the sun in tropical regions. Climate and ocean currents move this thermal energy toward the poles, where the heat radiates upward into space. Much of this heat is in far-infrared wavelengths and has never been measured systematically before, NASA added.
PREFIRE is comprised of two CubeSats equipped with specialized miniature heat sensors. The launch date for the second satellite will be announced shortly after the launch of the first satellite, NASA said.
Once launched, the two satellites will be in asynchronous, near-polar orbits – passing over a specific location at different times, looking at the same area within hours of each other.
This should allow satellites to collect data on phenomena that occur on a short time scale and require frequent measurements – such as how the amount of cloud cover affects the temperature on the Earth below.
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