NASA's Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) launched in 2024 to fill an important gap in our ability to measure the finger-prints of the processes that shape the Arctic and Antarctic environments. In their first year in orbit, PREFIRE's CubeSats have mapped Earth's emission spectrum including far-infrared wavelengths longer than 15 micrometers. These longer wavelengths represent about 50% of Earth's emission but have not been systematically measured in more than four decades. The PREFIRE measurements reveal characteristics of polar surfaces and properties of the overlying cold, dry atmospheres that are otherwise inaccessible to other satellite platforms.