Pictures of NASA Probes Arriving in the Moon’s Orbit
NASA recently dispatched two probes to the moon that arrived in its orbit on Sunday, according to the space agency.
The mission consisted of the spacecraft traveling 2.6-million-miles to arrive into lunar orbit. What is known as NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL spacecraft was sent to the moon in order to map its interior.
GRAIL will spend the next two months at a 34-mile-high orbit working to measure the pushes and pulls of the moon’s gravity. With the help of this data scientists can use it to find out what is inside the moon.
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“Pop the bubbly and toast the moon,” wrote NASA on its Twitter feed after the first GRAIL spacecraft arrived at its destination on New Year’s Eve. The second arrived around 25 hours later.
“Everything is looking good,” wrote NASA when the second spacecraft arrived. “It’s going to be a great 2012.”
NASA plans to tweak the two probes orbit over the course of the next two months in order to have them fly in formation low over the lunar poles. GRAIL will have to speed up in certain areas of the Moon’s orbit in order to avoid being pulled by extra gravitational tugs.
Scientist plan to use the changes in distance between both spacecraft in order to create a gravity map of the moon. These changes are as small as a fraction of a micron per second. A microns width is equivalent to that of a red blood cell.
They also plan to use the data collected from GRAIL to model the moon’s interior. This is a feat that has yet to be accomplished despite more than 100 previous missions to the moon, including six expeditions involving astronauts between 1969 and 1972.
