{"id":189,"date":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/scientific-phase-of-nasas-grail-moon-mission-begins\/"},"modified":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T00:00:00","slug":"scientific-phase-of-nasas-grail-moon-mission-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/scientific-phase-of-nasas-grail-moon-mission-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Phase Of NASA\u2019s GRAIL Moon Mission Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Image Caption: Artist concept of GRAIL mission. Grail will fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The data collection phase for\u00a0NASA<\/a>\u2018s pair of lunar-orbiting Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has officially commenced, the US space agency announced on Friday.<\/p>\n

The lone scientific instrument on board the\u00a0GRAIL<\/a>\u00a0orbiters was activated Thursday at 12:28pm EDT (9:28am PDT), when the twin vehicles were located 19 miles (30 kilometers) above the Ocean of Storms, according to officials from NASA\u2019s California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL<\/a>).<\/p>\n

That device, the Lunar Gravity Ranging System, will be used during the science phase of GRAIL\u2019s mission, which will run until December 3 and will analyze the moon\u2019s gravitational field. The satellites will attempt to derive the gravitational influence of craters, mountains, and other surface and subsurface features, and in order to do so at the highest possible resolution, mission planners are planning to lower the altitude of the probes by half \u2014 to the lowest levels that can be safely maintained, according to JPL officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data collected during GRAIL\u2019s primary mission team are currently being analyzed and hold the promise of producing a gravity field map of extraordinary quality and resolution,\u201d\u00a0Maria Zuber<\/a>, principal GRAIL investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. \u201cMapping at a substantially lower altitude during the extended mission, and getting an even more intimate glimpse of our nearest celestial neighbor, provides the unique opportunity to globally map the shallow crust of a planetary body beyond Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The overall objective of the\u00a0GRAIL mission<\/a>\u00a0is to create the most accurate gravity map of the moon to date, and from that to derive its internal structure and evolution. Scientists report that four of that mission\u2019s six principle scientific measurement goals had already been reached, as the Lunar Gravity Ranging System collects data when the two GRAIL vehicles transmit radio signals from one to the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the prime mission, which stretched from March 1 to May 29, the two GRAIL spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, orbited at an average altitude of 34 miles (55 kilometers),\u201d officials from JPL said. \u201cThe average orbital altitude during extended mission will be 14 miles (23 kilometers), which places the GRAIL twins within five miles (eight kilometers) of some of the moon\u2019s higher surface features.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Lehman, the GRAIL project manager at JPL, said that both GRAIL spacecrafts were doing \u201cgreat,\u201d especially in light of the multiple challenges they have faced since their September 2011 launch. Those obstacles included a lunar eclipse in June of this year, as well as more than two dozen rocket burns since arriving in lunar orbit in early 2012.<\/p>\n

On the mission\u2019s\u00a0official website<\/a>, NASA personnel reported that the mission, upon completion, will improve scientists\u2019 understanding of near-side moon gravity by 100 times and of far-side gravity by 1,000 times. They also noted that this mission marks the first time any space agency had attempted to maneuver a pair of robotic spacecraft in the same, precise orbit around any celestial body other than Earth.<\/p>\n

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Image Caption: Artist concept of GRAIL mission. Grail will fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The data collection phase for\u00a0NASA\u2018s pair of lunar-orbiting Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has officially commenced, the US space agency announced on Friday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,80,81,5,82,6,1],"tags":[42,43,1198,124,1199,1200,1201,1202,865,1203,1058,785,703,680,704],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100-commissions","category-about","category-animal","category-arts-culture","category-atmosphere","category-autos-cars","category-beauty-and-fashion","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-apple","tag-discovery-program","tag-environment","tag-gravity-recovery-and-interior-laboratory","tag-interior-laboratory","tag-japanese-space-program","tag-moon","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-selene","tag-space-technology","tag-spacecraft","tag-spaceflight","tag-technology-internet","tag-unmanned-spacecraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/simonlee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}