Browsing: / Home / NASA Launches MoonKam
Print Shortlink

NASA Launches MoonKam

By RD Bentley on September 11, 2011 in ,

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Pad SLC-17B at 9:08 a.m. EDT.

More About GRAIL:

GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth’s moon and provide scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Scientists will use the gravity field information from the two satellites to X-ray the moon from crust to core to reveal the moon’s subsurface structures and, indirectly, its thermal history.

GRAIL FAST FACTS

  • What it stands for: Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory
  • What it is: Twin satellites will circle the Moon in tandem orbit.
  • The mission: The satellites will precisely map the Moon’s gravity.
  • Launch date: September 2011
  • Insertion into orbit: January 2012
  • Scientific mission: March-May 2012
  • Mission partners: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lockheed Martin, Goddard Space Flight Center, Sally Ride Science
  • GRAIL MoonKAM: MoonKAM stands for Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students. Students can request that special cameras on the satellites take photos of specific areas of the lunar surface.

    • The GRAIL MoonKAM will allow classrooms to request pictures of the lunar surface from cameras on the twin satellite.

  • NASA HD-TV on USTREAM
  • APOD: GRAIL Photos

    • Mixx Delicious Digg Facebook Twitter

    Leave a Reply