WASHINGTON — NASA is gearing up for back-to-back launches of cubesats designed to supply key information for bettering fashions of the Earth’s local weather.
The primary of dual cubesats for NASA’s Polar Radiant Vitality within the Far Infrared Experiment, or PREFIRE, mission is scheduled to launch no sooner than Could 22 on an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab’s Launch Advanced 1 in New Zealand. The opposite cubesat might be launched on one other Electron inside three weeks.
Every 6U cubesat carries a thermal infrared spectrometer based mostly on applied sciences flown on a number of different spacecraft however repackaged to suit throughout the measurement and mass constrains of the cubesat. The devices will gather data on emissions at far infrared wavelengths, longer than 15 microns, on the Earth’s poles.
The information, venture and NASA officers stated at a Could 15 briefing, will assist scientists higher perceive how a lot warmth the Earth loses to house on the poles, which can be utilized to enhance local weather fashions.
“The Arctic is warming sooner than wherever else on Earth. That has large potential penalties,” stated Tristan L’Ecuyer, principal investigator for PREFIRE on the College of Wisconsin-Madison. These penalties are each native and international, with the latter together with sea stage rise and broader climate techniques.
PREFIRE will make the primary detailed measurements of radiant warmth emitted on the poles, he defined. “What that’s going to permit us to do is, for the primary time, perceive what the completely different processes within the polar areas, like clouds, humidity within the environment and the altering floor — going from an ice floor to a liquid floor — does by way of altering that warmth loss.”
These measurements will be performed with a single cubesat, however having two satellites, launched into completely different sun-synchronous orbital planes, allow further measurements. “Having one cubesat would be capable to map out what the emission seems like within the polar areas,” L’Ecuyer stated, “however by having a second cubesat that flies over about six hours later, we will perceive how adjustments, like melting of the ice sheet or a cloud formation or a rise within the quantity of moisture within the environment, have an effect on the emissions.”
That drives the bizarre strategy to this mission, with devoted launches of particular person cubesats on an Electron rocket to put them into their required, particular orbits. NASA chosen Rocket Lab to launch the PREFIRE spacecraft in August 2023 by a job order on the Enterprise-class Acquisition of Devoted and Rideshare (VADR) contract. NASA didn’t disclose the worth of the duty order.
Whereas Electron has vital extra capability for every PREFIRE launch, Peter Beck, chief govt of Rocket Lab, stated on the briefing that the corporate doesn’t plan to hold any secondary payloads or carry out any expertise demonstrations on the 2 launches. “It’s completely devoted to this mission,” he stated. “Simply these spacecraft on board.”
NASA chosen PREFIRE in 2018 at a part of its Earth Enterprise line of devices and missions with a price cap of almost $33 million. The mission “is a very nice instance of how we are able to goal our analysis efforts: how we are able to reply focused analysis questions with extra inexpensive choices,” stated Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth science division.
“Cubesats like PREFIRE characterize the flexibleness in our efforts to achieve house,” she stated. “It’s a a lot smaller payload with launch providers supplied by a industrial accomplice, all at a decrease price.”
