5 Things to Know About NASA’s Tiny Twin Polar Satellites

This artist’s concept depicts one of two PREFIRE CubeSats in orbit around Earth . The NASA mission will measure the amount of far-infrared radiation the planet’s polar regions shed to space – information that’s key to understanding Earth ’s energy balance.

Twin shoebox-size climate satellites will soon be studying two of the most remote regions on Earth: the Arctic and Antarctic. The NASA mission will measure the amount of heat the planet emits into space from these polar regions — information that’s key to understanding the balance of energy coming into and out of Earth and how that affects the planet’s climate.

Each of PREFIRE’s cube satellites, or CubeSats, will use a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the heat, in the form of far-infrared energy, radiated into space by Earth’s surface and atmosphere.1. The PREFIRE CubeSats will provide new information on how Earth’s atmosphere and ice influence the amount of heat being radiated out to space from the Arctic and Antarctic.

The CubeSats will gather data over the poles using sensors that are sensitive to 10 times more infrared wavelengths than any similar instrument. Information gathered by the mission will advance our understanding of when and where the poles shed heat into space, as well as why the Arctic has warmed more than 2½ times faster than the rest of the planet since the 1970s.

The PREFIRE CubeSats use advances in spectrometry to measure processes associated with ice melt and formation, snow melt and accumulation, and changes in cloud cover. A single satellite that revisits the same region of Earth every several days can monitor seasonal changes that researchers can use to improve climate models.

Earth Earth Science Jet Propulsion Laboratory PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy In The Far-Infrared

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