[meteorite-list] NASA Launches GRAIL To Study Moon From Crust To Core

[Ron Baalke]

Sept. 10, 2011

Dwayne Brown 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1726 
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

DC Agle 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-393-9011 
agle at jpl.nasa.gov 

Caroline McCall 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 
617-253-1682 
cmcall5 at mit.edu 

RELEASE: 11-293

NASA LAUNCHES MISSION TO STUDY MOON FROM CRUST TO CORE

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and 
Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral 
Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m. EDT Saturday to study the 
moon in unprecedented detail. 

GRAIL-A is scheduled to reach the moon on New Year's Eve 2011, while 
GRAIL-B will arrive New Year's Day 2012. The two solar-powered 
spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its 
gravity field. GRAIL will answer longstanding questions about the 
moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and 
other rocky planets in the solar system formed. 

"If there was ever any doubt that Florida's Space Coast would continue 
to be open for business, that thought was drowned out by the roar of 
today's GRAIL launch," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "GRAIL 
and many other exciting upcoming missions make clear that NASA is 
taking its next big leap into deep space exploration, and the space 
industry continues to provide the jobs and workers needed to support 
this critical effort." 

The spacecraft were launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II 
rocket. GRAIL mission controllers acquired a signal from GRAIL-A at 
10:29 a.m. GRAIL-B's signal was eight minutes later. The telemetry 
downlinked from both spacecraft indicates they have deployed their 
solar panels and are operating as expected. 

"Our GRAIL twins have Earth in their rearview mirrors and the moon in 
their sights," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission team is 
ready to test, analyze and fine tune our spacecraft over the next 
three-and-a-half months on our journey to lunar orbit." 

The straight-line distance from Earth to the moon is approximately 
250,000 miles (402,336 kilometers). NASA's Apollo moon crews needed 
approximately three days to cover that distance. However, each 
spacecraft will take approximately 3.5 months and cover more than 2.5 
million miles (4 million kilometers) to arrive. This low-energy 
trajectory results in the longer travel time. The size of the launch 
vehicle allows more time for spacecraft check-out and time to update 
plans for lunar operations. The science collection phase for GRAIL is 
expected to last 82 days. 

"Since the earliest humans looked skyward, they have been fascinated 
by the moon," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber from the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "GRAIL will take 
lunar exploration to a new level, providing an unprecedented 
characterization of the moon's interior that will advance 
understanding of how the moon formed and evolved." 

JPL manages the GRAIL mission. It is part of the Discovery Program 
managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. 
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. Launch 
management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch 
Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida 

For more information about GRAIL, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/grail 

http://grail.nasa.gov 

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