Rapid changes are happening on our planet, particularly in regions like the Arctic. These changes are unprecedented and have a major impact on climate and weather. To better understand these changes, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is set to provide new measurements of far-infrared wavelengths emitted from Earth’s poles. These measurements can be utilized to improve climate and weather models, helping people globally to cope with the impacts of climate change.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, located at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is collaborating with NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program to provide the launch service for PREFIRE. This is part of NASA’s Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract. The PREFIRE mission was a joint effort between NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with NASA JPL managing the mission and providing the spectrometers. The CubeSats were built by Blue Canyon Technologies, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will process the data collected by the instruments.
The launch services provider for PREFIRE is Rocket Lab USA Inc., based in Long Beach, California. For more information about PREFIRE, visit this link: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/prefire/.
