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Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 1 at Māhia, New Zealand at 11:15 p.m. NZST June 5, 2024, carrying a small satellite for NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission. 
RocketLab

The second of NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) two satellites is communicating with ground controllers after launching at 3:15 p.m. NZST, Wednesday (11:15 p.m. EDT, June 4). Data from these two shoebox-size cube satellites, or CubeSats, will better predict how Earth’s ice, seas, and weather will change in a warming world — providing information to help humanity thrive on our changing planet.  

The CubeSat launched on top Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand, and follows the May 25 launch of the first PREFIRE CubeSat. After a 30-day checkout period, when engineers and scientists confirm both CubeSats are operating normally, the mission is expected to operate for 10 months.

“By helping to clarify the role that Earth’s polar regions play in regulating our planet’s energy budget, the PREFIRE mission will ultimately help improve climate and ice models,” said Amanda Whitehurst, PREFIRE program executive, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Improved models will benefit humanity by giving us a better idea of how our climate and weather patterns will change in the coming years.”

Capitalizing on NASA’s unique vantage point in space, PREFIRE will help understand the balance between incoming heat energy from the Sun and the outgoing heat given off at Earth’s poles. The Arctic and Antarctica act something like the radiator in a car’s engine shedding much of the heat initially absorbed at the tropics back into space. The majority of that heat is emitted as far-infrared radiation. The water vapor content of the atmosphere, along with the presence, structure, and composition of clouds, influences the amount of radiation that escapes into space from the poles.

The PREFIRE mission will give researchers information on where and when far-infrared energy radiates from the Arctic and Antarctic environments into space. The mission also will use its two CubeSats in asynchronous, near-polar orbits to study how relatively short-lived phenomena like cloud formation, moisture changes, and ice sheet melt affect far-infrared emissions over time. The two satellites pass over the same part of Earth at different times of day, giving researchers information on changing conditions.

“Climate change is reshaping our environment and atmosphere in ways that we need to prepare for,” said Brian Drouin, PREFIRE’s deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “This mission will give us new measurements of the far-infrared wavelengths being emitted from Earth’s poles, which we can use to improve climate and weather models and help people around the world deal with the consequences of climate change.”

Each CubeSat carries an instrument called a thermal infrared spectrometer, which uses specially shaped mirrors and sensors to measure infrared wavelengths. Miniaturizing the instruments to fit on CubeSats required downsizing some parts while scaling up other components.

“Equipped with advanced infrared sensors that are more sensitive than any similar instrument, the PREFIRE CubeSats will help us better understand Earth’s polar regions and improve our climate models,” said Laurie Leshin, director at NASA JPL. “Their observations will lead to more accurate predictions about sea level rise, weather patterns, and changes in snow and ice cover, which will help us navigate the challenges of a warming world.”

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 Program, is providing the launch service as part of the agency’s Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract.

The PREFIRE mission was jointly developed by NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. NASA JPL manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate and provided the spectrometers. Blue Canyon Technologies built the CubeSats and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will process the data the instruments collect. The launch services provider is Rocket Lab USA Inc. of Long Beach, California.

To learn more about PREFIRE, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/prefire/

-end-

Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1600

karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov

Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874

jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov

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      NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
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      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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      Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
      NASA Headquarters, Washington
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      karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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      The Juno spacecraft made extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of its pizza-faced surface. During the close approaches, Juno communicated with NASA’s Deep Space Network, acquiring high-precision, dual-frequency Doppler data, which was used to measure Io’s gravity by tracking how it affected the spacecraft’s acceleration. What the mission learned about the moon’s gravity from those flybys led to the new paper by revealing more details about the effects of a phenomenon called tidal flexing.
      This five-frame sequence shows a giant plume erupting from Io’s Tvashtar volcano, extending 200 miles (330 kilometers) above the fiery moon’s surface. It was captured over an eight-minute period by NASA’s New Horizons mission as the spacecraft flew by Jupiter in 2007.NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/SwRI Prince of Jovian Tides
      Io is extremely close to mammoth Jupiter, and its elliptical orbit whips it around the gas giant once every 42.5 hours. As the distance varies, so does Jupiter’s gravitational pull, which leads to the moon being relentlessly squeezed. The result: an extreme case of tidal flexing — friction from tidal forces that generates internal heat.
      “This constant flexing creates immense energy, which literally melts portions of Io’s interior,” said Bolton. “If Io has a global magma ocean, we knew the signature of its tidal deformation would be much larger than a more rigid, mostly solid interior. Thus, depending on the results from Juno’s probing of Io’s gravity field, we would be able to tell if a global magma ocean was hiding beneath its surface.”
      The Juno team compared Doppler data from their two flybys with observations from the agency’s previous missions to the Jovian system and from ground telescopes. They found tidal deformation consistent with Io not having a shallow global magma ocean.
      “Juno’s discovery that tidal forces do not always create global magma oceans does more than prompt us to rethink what we know about Io’s interior,” said lead author Ryan Park, a Juno co-investigator and supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at JPL. “It has implications for our understanding of other moons, such as Enceladus and Europa, and even exoplanets and super-Earths. Our new findings provide an opportunity to rethink what we know about planetary formation and evolution.”
      There’s more science on the horizon. The spacecraft made its 66th science flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops on Nov. 24. Its next close approach to the gas giant will occur 12:22 a.m. EST, Dec. 27. At the time of perijove, when Juno’s orbit is closest to the planet’s center, the spacecraft will be about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops and will have logged 645.7 million miles (1.039 billion kilometers) since entering the gas giant’s orbit in 2016.
      More About Juno
      JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Italian Space Agency (ASI) funded the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft. Various other institutions around the U.S. provided several of the other scientific instruments on Juno.
      More information about Juno is available at:
      https://science.nasa.gov/mission/juno
      News Media Contacts
      DC Agle
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      818-393-9011
      agle@jpl.nasa.gov
      Karen Fox / Erin Morton
      NASA Headquarters, Washington
      202-385-1287 / 202-805-9393
      karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / erin.morton@nasa.gov
      Deb Schmid
      Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
      210-522-2254
      dschmid@swri.org
      2024-173
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      Last Updated Dec 12, 2024 Related Terms
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      Watersheds on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard will be among the areas most affected by underground saltwater intrusion by the year 2100 due to sea level rise and changes in groundwater supplies, according to a NASA-DOD study. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on April 21, 2023. Intrusion of saltwater into coastal groundwater can make water there unusable, damage ecosystems, and corrode infrastructure.
      Seawater will infiltrate underground freshwater supplies in about three of every four coastal areas around the world by the year 2100, according to a recent study led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In addition to making water in some coastal aquifers undrinkable and unusable for irrigation, these changes can harm ecosystems and corrode infrastructure.
      Called saltwater intrusion, the phenomenon happens below coastlines, where two masses of water naturally hold each other at bay. Rainfall on land replenishes, or recharges, fresh water in coastal aquifers (underground rock and soil that hold water), which tends to flow below ground toward the ocean. Meanwhile, seawater, backed by the pressure of the ocean, tends to push inland. Although there’s some mixing in the transition zone where the two meet, the balance of opposing forces typically keeps the water fresh on one side and salty on the other.
      Now, two impacts of climate change are tipping the scales in favor of salt water. Spurred by planetary warming, sea level rise is causing coastlines to migrate inland and increasing the force pushing salt water landward. At the same time, slower groundwater recharge — due to less rainfall and warmer weather patterns — is weakening the force moving the underground fresh water in some areas.
      Worldwide Intrusion
      Saltwater intrusion will affect groundwater in about three of every four coastal aquifers around the world by the year 2100, a NASA-DOD study estimates. Saltwater can make groundwater in coastal areas undrinkable and useless for irrigation, as well as harm ecosystems and corrode infrastructure.NASA/JPL-Caltech The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters in November, evaluated more than 60,000 coastal watersheds (land area that channels and drains all the rainfall and snowmelt from a region into a common outlet) around the world, mapping how diminished groundwater recharge and sea level rise will each contribute to saltwater intrusion while estimating what their net effect will be.
      Considering the two factors separately, the study’s authors found that by 2100 rising sea levels alone will tend to drive saltwater inland in 82% of coastal watersheds studied. The transition zone in those places would move a relatively modest distance: no more than 656 feet (200 meters) from current positions. Vulnerable areas include low-lying regions such as Southeast Asia, the coast around the Gulf of Mexico, and much of the United States’ Eastern Seaboard.  
      Meanwhile, slower recharge on its own will tend to cause saltwater intrusion in 45% of the coastal watersheds studied. In these areas, the transition zone would move farther inland than it will from sea level rise — as much as three-quarters of a mile (about 1,200 meters) in some places. The regions to be most affected include the Arabian Peninsula, Western Australia, and Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. In about 42% of coastal watersheds, groundwater recharge will increase, tending to push the transition zone toward the ocean and in some areas overcoming the effect of saltwater intrusion by sea level rise.
      All told, due to the combined effects of changes in sea level and groundwater recharge, saltwater intrusion will occur by century’s end in 77% of the coastal watersheds evaluated, according to the study.
      Generally, lower rates of groundwater recharge are going to drive how far saltwater intrudes inland, while sea level rise will determine how widespread it is around the world. “Depending on where you are and which one dominates, your management implications might change,” said Kyra Adams, a groundwater scientist at JPL and the paper’s lead author. 
      For example, if low recharge is the main reason intrusion is happening in one area, officials there might address it by protecting groundwater resources, she said. On the other hand, if the greater concern is that sea level rise will oversaturate an aquifer, officials might divert groundwater.
      Global Consistency
      Co-funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), the study is part of an effort to evaluate how sea level rise will affect the department’s coastal facilities and other infrastructure. It used information on watersheds collected in HydroSHEDS, a database managed by the World Wildlife Fund that uses elevation observations from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. To estimate saltwater intrusion distances by 2100, the researchers used a model accounting for groundwater recharge, water table rise, fresh- and saltwater densities, and coastal migration from sea level rise, among other variables.
      Study coauthor Ben Hamlington, a climate scientist at JPL and a coleader of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, said that the global picture is analogous to what researchers see with coastal flooding: “As sea levels rise, there’s an increased risk of flooding everywhere. With saltwater intrusion, we’re seeing that sea level rise is raising the baseline risk for changes in groundwater recharge to become a serious factor.”
      A globally consistent framework that captures localized climate impacts is crucial for countries that don’t have the expertise to generate one on their own, he added.
      “Those that have the fewest resources are the ones most affected by sea level rise and climate change,” Hamlington said, “so this kind of approach can go a long way.”
      News Media Contacts
      Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
      andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov 
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      Last Updated Dec 11, 2024 Related Terms
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