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The mission is called PREFIRE,
and that stands

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for the polar radiant energy
in the far infrared experiment.

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PREFIRE will measure
the complete spectrum

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of emitted energy
from the polar regions.

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And by doing so, help us
to improve our predictions

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of polar climate change.

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I think the biggest concern
about the Arctic is just

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how rapidly and how dramatically
it's changing.

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We're seeing changes
in the Arctic

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now that are unlike anything

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that we've seen in
at least the last 300 years.

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So we're unprepared
for those changes

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and we really don't know
what we're going

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to need to do to adapt
to those changes.

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Each of our fire CubeSats carry

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something called a thermal
infrared spectrometer.

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The thermal infrared
spectrometer is an instrument

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that looks down at the earth
and gathers energy

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being emitted from the planet
at different wavelengths,

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The instruments are

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going to be attached
to what we call CubeSat.

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The CubeSats are about the size
of a large shoebox,

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and the instrument itself
is going to take up about half

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of that space.

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The real
ultimate goal of PREFIRE

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is to be able to improve
our predictions of 5 to 10 to

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maybe 50 years from now
so that we can be prepared

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for those changes and adapt and
make sure that the communities

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that are going to be affected
are resilient to those changes.

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because the Arctic is changing
so quickly.

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There's a real urgency
to getting this information now.

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We need to have

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better predictions
of how sea level will change,

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how the weather around
the planet is going to change.

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The only way we're going to do
that is to understand

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how the polar regions are
responding to climate change.