PREFIRE Satellite Illustration

The PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission will send two CubeSats – shown as an artist's concept against an image of Earth from orbit – into space to study how much heat the planet absorbs and emits from its polar regions, including the Arctic and Antarctica.

Analysis of PREFIRE measurements will inform climate and ice models, providing better projections of how a warming world will affect sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise. Improving climate models can ultimately help to provide more accurate projections on the impacts of storm severity and frequency, as well as coastal erosion and flooding.

The mission consists of two 6U CubeSats with a baseline mission length of 10 months and is jointly developed by NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate and is providing the instruments. Blue Canyon Technologies is building the CubeSats, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will process the data collected by the instruments. The science team includes members from JPL and the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado.