A small NASA satellite intended to measure for the first time in detail heat loss into space via the Earth’s poles took off from New Zealand on Saturday.
This mission, called Prefire, should notably make it possible to improve scientists’ forecasts related to climate change.
“This new information, which we have never had in the past, will help us model what is happening at the poles, and for the climate”declared Karen St. Germain, director of scientific research on Earth at NASA, at a press conference in mid-May.
The satellite, the size of a shoebox, was launched by an Electron rocket from the company Rocket Lab from Mahia, in the north of New Zealand. A similar satellite will be launched by the same company later.
Both will be used to make far-infrared measurements over the Arctic and Antarctic, to directly quantify the heat released into space for the first time.
This phenomenon of loss is “crucial because it helps to balance the excess heat received from tropical regions and to regulate the earth’s temperature”explained Tristan L’Ecuyer, scientific manager of the mission at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“And this process driving heat from regions of the tropics to the poles is what is at the origin of all our weather on Earth”he added.
Thanks to Prefire, NASA wants to understand how clouds, humidity or even the transformation of a frozen surface into liquid influence this heat loss.
Until now, the models used by scientists to anticipate global warming are only based, regarding this parameter, on theories and not real observations, explained Tristan L’Ecuyer.
“We hope to improve our ability to simulate sea level rise in the future, as well as how climate change at the poles will affect the planet’s weather systems,” he detailed.
This satellite joins more than twenty other NASA missions responsible for observing the Earth, already in orbit.
Small satellites like this one are called Cubesat and represent a real opportunity to respond “cheaper” to questions “very targeted”explained Karen St. Germain.
If the more classic large satellites can be seen as “generalists”these small machines are comparable to “specialists”she stressed. “NASA needs both.”
