[meteorite-list] GRAIL Spacecraft Returns First Video from Far Side Of The Moon

[Ron Baalke]

Feb. 1, 2012

Dwayne Brown 
Headquarters, Washington202-358-1726 
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 

Whitney Lawrence Mullen 
Sally Ride Science, San Diego 
858-638-1432 
wmullen at sallyridescience.com 

RELEASE: 12-040

NASA SPACECRAFT RETURNS FIRST VIDEO FROM FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

WASHINGTON -- A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And 
Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first 
unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge 
Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students 
nationwide to select lunar images for study. 

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and 
Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKam. The images were taken 
as part of a test of Ebb's MoonKam on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project 
plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date. 

To view the 30-second video clip, visit: 

http://go.nasa.gov/zZXAPs 

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the 
screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of 
the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of 
the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560 mile-wide (900 kilometer) 
impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side. 

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. 
To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93 
mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive 
star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, 
created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact. 

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM 
students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, 
GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology in Cambridge. 

The twin spacecraft successfully achieved lunar orbit last New Year's 
Eve and New Year's Day. Previously named GRAIL-A and -B, the washing 
machine-sized spacecraft received their new names from fourth graders 
at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., following 
a nationwide student-naming contest. 

Thousands of fourth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas 
on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission 
Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be 
sent back by the satellites for students to study. The MoonKAM 
program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. Her 
team at Sally Ride Science and undergraduate students at the 
University of California in San Diego will engage middle schools 
across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. GRAIL 
is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully 
dedicated to education and public outreach. 

"We have had great response from schools around the country, more than 
2,500 signed up to participate so far," Ride said. "In mid-March, the 
first pictures of the moon will be taken by students using MoonKAM. I 
expect this will excite many students about possible careers in 
science and engineering." 

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow periodically perform 
trajectory correction maneuvers that, over time, will lower their 
orbits to near-circular ones with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 
kilometers). During their science mission, the duo 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. 

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the 
GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 
The GRAIL mission 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. 

For more information about GRAIL, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/grail 

Information about MoonKAM is available at: 

https://moonkam.ucsd.edu/ 

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