PREFIRE: Polar Far-Infrared Spectral Radiance from CubeSat 2

PREFIRE's dual CubeSats carry push broom spectrometers with 63 channels measuring mid- and far-infrared radiation from 5 to 53 µm, a spectral range where most polar emissions occur but which has not been measured on a large scale. This Level 1B dataset provides calibrated and geolocated spectral radiance, processed using satellite telemetry and a digital elevation map, to fill knowledge gaps in the global energy budget. The data is used to analyze the polar radiative budget and serves as input for Level 2 products like top-of-atmosphere flux, surface emissivity, and atmospheric properties.

Use Cases

• Characterizing polar far-infrared emissions for global energy budget studies based on the 63 spectral channels.
• Assimilating spectral radiance data into global circulation models to improve climate predictions.
• Deriving atmospheric properties like cloud cover, temperature profiles, and water vapor profiles as Level 2 inputs.
• Analyzing surface spectral emissivity in polar regions using geolocated radiance measurements.
• Monitoring changes in polar radiative fluxes over time from the ongoing time-series data starting June 29, 2024.

Strengths

• Provides unique, large-scale measurements in the critical far-infrared spectrum (5-53 µm) from polar regions.
• Data collection is ongoing from a defined start date (June 29, 2024), enabling time-series analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and curation within the earth science community.

Limitations

• Key metadata is missing or conflicting: no column names are provided, and size/row counts are unknown across all sources.
• The spatial resolution is variable, as the scene footprint size decreases over time with the satellite's decaying orbit altitude.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details.

Provenance

Source

LARC_CLOUD (NASA Langley Research Center Cloud group), from the PREFIRE-SAT2 CubeSat.

Collection Method

Data collected by the Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE) aboard the satellite, then calibrated and geolocated using telemetry and a Digital Elevation Map.

Time Range

Science data retrieval started June 29, 2024, and is ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 according to NASA Earthdata and Data.gov.

Geography

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