NASA's PREFIRE CubeSat Mission Extended
August 18, 2025
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission has been extended through September 2026 and is broadening its focus from Earth’s poles to the entire globe. The mission’s two shoebox-size CubeSats gauge the capacity of water vapor, clouds, and other elements of Earth’s system to trap heat and keep it from radiating into space. This information can help improve forecasts, including weather severity and storm frequency. The climate science community and stakeholders are increasingly interested in how well we can predict the PDO from months to years in advance, but such predictions are not equally reliable at all times of year. As the PDO is part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system, such simulations are very resource intensive.
Read the full NASA news release featuring AOS professor Tristan L’Ecuyer, August 15, 2025