Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
UPDATE: The second of NASA’s two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)
spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working
together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before.
The first of twin probes equipped to study the Moon has entered lunar orbit.
NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A spacecraft successfully completed its planned main engine burn on December 31.
The next mission milestone occurs today when GRAIL-A’s mirror twin, GRAIL-B, performs its own main engine burn to place it in lunar orbit.
That event is slated today for 2:05 p.m. PST (5:05 p.m. EST) and will last about 39 minutes.
Check out this video showing the GRAIL team’s joy in learning of GRAIL-A’s march into lunar orbit.
Go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=127210941
GRAIL duties
Once both spacecraft are confirmed in orbit and operating, science work will begin in March.
Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft are built to map the Moon’s gravity field. Radio signals traveling between the two spacecraft provide scientists the exact measurements required as well as flow of information not interrupted when the spacecraft are at the lunar farside, not seen from Earth.
The result should be the most accurate gravity map of the Moon ever made.
The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth’s celestial companion, including the size of a possible inner core, and it should provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.
GRAIL is a part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
Want more information about GRAIL?
Visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail
By Leonard David