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Mars Base

NASA Moon Probes' Impact Craters Spotted from Space | Grail Mission | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-grail-moon-probes-graves.html

scibyte87 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 20 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) snapped a series of photographs of the two 16.5-foot-wide (5 meters) craters, which mark where the space agency's twin Grail probes ended their gravity-mapping mission, and their operational lives, on Dec. 17.
  • It's a bit of a surprise that the LROC team was able to find the craters at all
  • the craters are small, nondescript features on a body riddled with impact scars
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The two Grail spacecraft — known as Ebb and Flow — slammed into a mountain near the lunar north pole at 3,771 mph (6,070 km/h), striking the surface about 20 seconds apart.
  • The Grail craters first showed up in LROC photos from January, but images taken on Feb. 28 show them in much greater detail
  • used these later photos to produce a topographic map of the impact zone
  • This map revealed that the two craters are separated by about 7,250 feet (2,210 m) in straight-line distance and 985 feet (300 m) in altitude
  • the crashes ejected material that appears darker than the surrounding lunar dirt.
  • these may be dark due to spacecraft material being mixed with the ejecta
  • may be residual fuel left in the probes' lines, or bits of their carbon-fiber bodies
  • LRO didn't get any images of the actual crashes, which occurred in the dark.
  • ultraviolet imaging spectrograph did see emissions from mercury and atomic hydrogen in the ejected plumes when they rose high enough to reach sunlight
  • The analysis of the Grail impact plumes is ongoing
  • The probes' measurements have allowed scientists to create the best-ever gravity map of any celestial body
  • And that map is getting better all the time, as researchers continue to analyze the data
  • The twin probes, which were each about the size of a washing machine, zipped around the moon at an average altitude of just 7 miles (11 km) in their final days
Mars Base

GRAIL First Results Provide Most Precise Lunar Gravity Map Yet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...most-precise-lunar-gravity-map

scibyte74 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • first science results from NASA’s twin GRAIL lunar orbiters provide incredible detail of the Moon’s interior and the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body, including Earth
  • Ebb and Flow, send radio signals to each other and any changes in distance between the two as they circle the Moon are measured, down to changes as small as
  • 1/ 20,000th the velocity that a snail moves
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • new gravity maps reveals an abundance of features such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters
  • the moon’s gravity field is unlike that of any terrestrial planet in our solar system.
  • Ninety-eight percent of local gravity is associated with topography, while 2 percent are other gravitational features
  • You can see bull’s-eyes of the lunar mascons, but otherwise we see a smooth inner surface
  • The only way this could happen is if impacts to the early Moon shattered the inner surface
  • also revealed evidence for ancient volcanic activity under the surface of the Moon and strange linear gravitational anomalies
  • identified a large population of linear gravitational anomalies. We don’t see any expression of them on topography maps, so we infer that these are an ancient internal structures
  • Basin, which forms one of the ‘man on moon’s’ eyes, the gravity maps shows a linear feature crossing the basin while topography maps show no such correlating feature
  • the gravity anomaly formed before the impacts
  • Additional data reveal that the Moon’s inner crust in almost completely pulverized
  • Using GRAIL gravity data, we found the average thickness of the crust is 32-34 kilometers which is about 10 km less than previous studies
  • We found the bulk abundance of aluminum on Moon is nearly the same as that of the Earth
  • consistent with a recent hypothesis that the Moon is derived of materials from the Earth when it was formed during a giant impact event
  • GRAIL finishes the primary science mission in May and are currently working in an extended mission where the spacrafts’ altitude was lowered to just 23 km above the surface
  • During its prime mission, the two GRAIL spacecraft orbited just 55 km above the Moon’s surface
  • hearing results from the new data sets soon
  • the team will lower the GRAIL spacecraft down to just 11 km above the lunar surface.
  • extended mission will end soon, in mid-December, and soon after that, the two spacecraft will be crashed intentionally onto the lunar surface
  • they are still formulating ideas for the impact scenario, and looking at the possibility of aiming the crashes so they are within the field-of-view of instruments on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Mars Base

NASA lunar spacecraft GRAIL complete prime mission ahead of schedule - 0 views

phys.org/...ar-spacecraft-grail-prime.html

scibyte49 Grail moon

shared by Mars Base on 30 May 12 - No Cached
  • The team of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, with twin probes named Ebb and Flow, is now preparing for extended science operations starting Aug. 30 and continuing through Dec. 3, 2012.
  • March 8, the spacecraft have operated around the clock for 89 days.
  • collected data covering the entire surface three times
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • GRAIL delivered to Earth over 99.99 percent of the data that could have been collected
  • extended mission goal is to take an even closer look at the moon's gravity field. To achieve this, GRAIL mission planners will halve their current operating altitude to the lowest altitude that can be safely maintained.
  • Orbiting at an average altitude of 14 miles (23 kilometers)
  • clearing some of the moon's higher surface features by about 5 miles (8 kilometers),"
  • To date over 70,000 student images of the moon have been obtained.
Mars Base

SVS Animation 4023 - GRAIL Impacts the Moon - 0 views

svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/...index.html

scibyte75 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 18 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • GRAIL ends its successful mission by impacting the Moon on December 17, 2012 at approximately 5:27 p.m. EST (22:27 UT).
  • The two spacecraft were placed in an orbit that takes them within a kilometer of the surface, so low that they will hit the side of an unnamed mountain
  • near the north pole
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Ebb strikes first, followed 24 seconds later by Flow
  • Mars Base on 18 Dec 12
     
    The two spacecraft were placed in an orbit that takes them within a kilometer of the surface, so low that they will hit the side of an unnamed mountain
Mars Base

Moon Probes' Crash Site Named After Sally Ride | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ail-moon-crash-sally-ride.html

scibyte75 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 18 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The spot on the lunar surface where NASA intentionally crashed its twin gravity-mapping moon probes
  • Dec. 17) has been named after the late Sally Ride, America's first woman in space
  • Ebb and Flow, slammed into a crater rim near the moon's north pole at 5:28 p.m. EST (2228 GMT)
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • f Sally Ride, who played a key role in Grail's education and outreach efforts
  • Ride had led Grail's MoonKAM project, which allowed schoolkids around the world to select lunar sites for Ebb and Flow to photograph
Mars Base

Twin NASA Science Probes Start Lunar Gravity Mapping - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...es-start-lunar-gravity-mapping

scibyte37 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Twin GRAIL Moon Probes Ebb and Flow Start Lunar Gravity Science Mission
  • have just begun their science mission and will use a precision formation-flying technique to map Lunar Gravity
  • science mapping phase officially began Tuesday (March 6)
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • there is still a lot we don’t know about the Moon says Zuber, like why the near side is flooded with magma and smooth and the back side is not smooth and completely different.
  • formation-flying spacecraft will make detailed science measurements from lunar orbit with unparalleled precision to within 1 micron – the width of a human red blood cell
  • MoonKAMs on both Ebb and Flow were turned on Monday, March 5, and all appears well
  • Bozeman 4th graders will have the opportunity to target the first images a week after our science operations begin
Mars Base

Twin NASA spacecraft deliberately crash into moon - 0 views

phys.org/...cecraft-deliberately-moon.html

scibyte75 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 18 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • By design, the final resting place was far away from the Apollo landing sites and other historical spots on the moon
  • The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the moon will pass over the mountain and attempt to photograph the skid marks left by the washing machine sized-spacecraft as they hit the surface at 3,800 mph
  • the crash site was in darkness, the final act was not visible from Earth.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • During the primary mission, they flew about 35 miles above the lunar surface. After getting bonus data-collecting time, they lowered their altitude to 14 miles (22 kilometers) above the surface
Mars Base

Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos |... - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...epler_closer_to_its_holy_grail

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • five-planet system around a star called Kepler-62, some 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra
  • Astronomers found the planets by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
  • Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are far more accommodating. They are 1.6 and 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • early evidence supports the optimistic view that at least 62f is rocky
  • biggest uncertainty about both planets is their composition
  • an astronomer at the University of Washington
  • not involved in the research
  • Kepler-62e
  • may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
  • if 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, with one half of its surface always illuminated and the other perpetually dark
  • Kepler 62 is about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
  • Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars
  • harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
  • another study
  • led by
  • NASA Ames Research Center
  • identified two planets around a sunlike star called Kepler-69, some 2,700 light-years away
  • One of the planets is 1.7 times the size of Earth and teeters on the inner edge of the habitable zone
  • probably too hot for life
  • almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
  • even a planet 75 percent larger than Earth is potentially habitable
  • Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
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