PREFIRE Satellite Telemetry: Positioning and Pointing Data

PREFIRE CubeSats carry a push broom spectrometer with 63 channels measuring mid- and far-infrared radiation from approximately 5 to 53 µm. This telemetry dataset provides the time, beta angle, orbit position and velocity, and quaternion for each satellite, enabling geolocation of spectral measurements. The data is retrieved at 1Hz and aims to fill knowledge gaps in the polar radiant energy budget for climate models.

Use Cases

• Geolocating far-infrared spectral measurements based on satellite position and quaternion data.
• Assimilating polar radiant energy data into global circulation models based on the characterized emissions.
• Analyzing satellite orbit dynamics and beta angles for mission planning.
• Calibrating and validating climate model predictions using newly measured polar emissions.

Strengths

• Data is retrieved at a high frequency of 1Hz, providing detailed temporal resolution.
• The dataset is part of a mission specifically designed to measure previously uncharacterized far-infrared polar emissions.
• It has cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov, indicating formal curation.

Limitations

• Column names are unknown across all sources, limiting precise understanding of data structure.
• Dataset size and row counts are not provided.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without details.

Provenance

Source

LARC_CLOUD (from NASA Earthdata)

Collection Method

Satellite telemetry retrieved from polar orbiting CubeSats.

Time Range

Data retrieval started June 29, 2024 and is ongoing.

Freshness

2026-04-09 23:04:41.653060

Geography

Global, with the greatest concentration of data in the polar regions.