(AGENPARL) - Roma, 14 Agosto 2023 - (AGENPARL) – lun 14 agosto 2023 August 14, 2023 
RELEASE 23-087
*NASA Announces Launch Service for Arctic Warming Experiment*
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Artist’s concept of PREFIRE CubeSats in space.
*/Credits: NASA JPL/*
NASA has selected Rocket Lab USA Inc. of Long Beach, California, to provide
the launch service for the agency’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the
Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission, which aims to give researchers a more
accurate picture of the energy entering and leaving Earth.
The PREFIRE [1] mission will help close a gap in our understanding of how
much of Earth’s heat is lost to space, especially from 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.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space
Center in Florida, in partnership with NASA’s Earth System Science
Pathfinder office, is announcing the launch service as part of the agency’s
VADR [2] (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) launch
services contract.
-end-
*Press Contacts*
Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
Leejay Lockhart
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-747-8310
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[1] https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/projects/prefire/
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/13-companies-to-provide-venture-class-launch-services-for-nasa