LAFAYETTE, Colo. - RTX's small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider, Blue Canyon Technologies in Lafayette, Colo., has established communication with both CubeSats for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) mission. The PREFIRE mission will measure the amount of heat Earth emits into space from the Arctic and Antarctica.
Blue Canyon provided two heritage 6U CubeSats for the mission, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. Analysis of PREFIRE's measurements will inform climate and ice models, helping to improve projections of how a warming world will affect sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise.
Two 6U CubeSat spacecraft will be in two different 470-650 km altitude, near-polar (82°-98° inclination) orbits, each with a Heritage miniaturized IR spectrometer, covering the 0-54 μm region at 0.84 μm spectral resolution, operating for one seasonal cycle with diurnal subsampling.
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"Improving climate models can provide more accurate projections on the impacts of storm severity and frequency, as well as coastal erosion and flooding," said Chris Winslett, general manager for Blue Canyon Technologies.
The PREFIRE project was jointly developed by NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. JPL provided the thermal infrared spectrometer payload, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will process the data collected by the instruments.
