NASA’s new mission to study heat loss in polar regions is set to launch on May 22. This will allow us to learn about how the Arctic and Antarctic regions, two of the most distant regions of the Earth, conduct heat upward into space.
The first of NASA’s small twin satellites is set to launch from New Zealand on May 22 as part of the PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) polar mission.
A second CubeSat satellite is scheduled to launch two weeks after the first, the space agency said.
How do satellites work?
A shoebox-sized cube of satellites will be launched on a Mission Electron rocket. It is equipped with technology proven on Mars and will measure “a little-explored part” of the radiant energy emitted by Earth, the company said.
Two satellites carrying a thermal infrared are in asynchronous polar orbits and pass over a given location on Earth at different times. They overlap every few hours near the poles to maximize coverage.
The devices, which weigh less than 6 pounds (3 kilograms), take measurements using a device called a thermocouple, similar to the sensors found in many home thermostats.
The mission aims to make climate models more accurate by revealing for the first time the full spectrum of heat loss from Earth’s polar regions.
