The second CubeSat is targeting a launch two weeks following the first launch, according to the space agency.

How will the satellites work?

The mission with cube satellites about the size of a shoebox will be launched aboard an Electron launch vehicle.

It is equipped with technology proven on Mars, and will measure a “little-studied portion” of the radiant energy emitted by Earth, the agency said.

Two satellites carrying a thermal infrared spectrometer will be in asynchronous near-polar orbits and will be passing over a given spot on Earth at different times. To maximize coverage, they will be overlapping every few hours near the poles.

The instruments weighing less than 6 pounds (3 kilograms) each will make readings using a device called a thermocouple, similar to the sensors found in many household thermostats.

Why is the mission considered crucial to understanding climate change?

The objective of the mission is to reveal the full spectrum of heat loss from Earth’s polar regions for the first time, making climate models more accurate.

Now, Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the Sun at the tropics. This heat energy is moved towards the poles by the stirring of air and water, through weather and ocean currents. From here, it is radiated upward into space.

Some 60 per cent of the heat energy that flows out to space in far-infrared wavelengths have never been systematically measured, as per NASA. Hence, the data from PREFIRE mission is aimed at addressing the gap in knowledge and provide data to improve predictions of climate change and sea level rise.

Further, here are 5 things the mission is expected to achieve:

📌 Provide new information on how Earth’s atmosphere and how ice influences the amount of heat being radiated out to space from the Arctic and Antarctic.

📌Understand why the Arctic has warmed more than 2½ times faster than the rest of the planet since the 1970s.

📌Give scientists a better idea of how efficiently far-infrared heat is emitted by matter like snow and sea ice, and how clouds influence the amount of far-infrared radiation that escapes to space.

📌Help researchers better predict how the heat exchange between Earth and space will change in the future, and how those changes will affect phenomena like ice sheet melting, atmospheric temperatures, and global weather.

📌Provide answers to critical questions on climate change using a platform that costs less than a full-size satellite.

Why is it important to study the polar regions?

NASA highlights that in a planetary balancing act, the amount of heat energy the planet receives from the Sun should ideally be offset by the amount it radiates out of the Earth system into space.

The difference between the incoming and the outgoing energy determines Earth’s temperature and shapes our climate. Polar regions come into the picture here and play a key role in this process.

“If you change the polar regions, you also fundamentally change the weather around the world. Extreme storms, flooding, coastal erosion – all of these things are influenced by what’s going on in the Arctic and Antarctic,” the PREFIRE mission’s principal investigator Tristan L’Ecuyer was quoted as saying by the agency.