Rocket Lab secured another pair of Electron missions under NASA’s VADR program today. The two launches will support a climate monitoring program called PREFIRE and will be slated for mid-2024.

TechCrunch has more info on the science of PREFIRE:

The PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission will gather data on how much far-infrared energy is emitted at the poles, and how those emissions change throughout the day and year. Far-infrared is a poorly understood portion of the Earth’s energy spectrum, though nearly 60% of Arctic emissions occur at these wavelengths.

The two satellites, each the size of a bread loaf, will be equipped with a miniaturized instrument called a thermal IR spectrometer. Scientists will be able to compare the data to conditions in cloud cover and sea ice levels below, and hopefully generate more accurate climate models into the future.