Going out with a bang: Nasa prepares to crash probes into the surface of the moon in dramatic finale to year-long lunar mission
A year-long mission to learn what
lies beneath the lunar surface will culminate next week with Nasa
crashing a pair of small robotic science probes into the moon.
The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft will plunge into a mountain near the moon's north pole, a site selected to avoid hitting any of the Apollo or other lunar relics.
The impacts, which are not expected to be visible from Earth, will take place about 20 seconds apart at 10.28pm UK time on Monday.
'They're going to be completely blown apart,' GRAIL project manager David Lehman, with Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call.
Almost out of fuel and
currently flying just 7 miles above the lunar surface, the probes will
make a final steering manoeuvre on Friday and shut down their science
instruments in preparation for Monday's crash.
The two spacecraft, known as Ebb and Flow and each about the size of a small washing machine, have been flying in close formation around the moon for nearly a year to map the lunar gravity.
Scientists precisely measure the distance between the two, a figure that slightly changes as they fly over denser regions of the moon. The gravitational pull of the additional mass causes first the leading probe and then the following one to speed up, altering the gap between them.
Gravity maps from the first part of the mission, collected between March and May 2012 when the spacecraft were about 34 miles above the lunar surface, revealed the moon has a shallower and much more fractured crust than expected - the result of asteroid and comet impacts billions of years ago.
'We know that the moon had been bombarded by impacts but what we found is just how broken up and fractured the crust of the moon is,' said lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Similar bombardments happened
on all the solid bodies of the inner solar system though the evidence on
Earth has been erased by erosion, plate tectonics and other phenomena.
'With Mars, there's a questions about where did the water that we think was on the surface go,' Zuber said. 'These fractures provide a pathway deep inside the planet and it's very easy to envision now how a possible ocean on the surface could have found its way deep into the crust.'
Scientists also discovered lava-filled subterranean cracks inside the moon, evidence that the body expanded early in its history.
In addition to planetary science, the gravity maps, along with detailed images of the lunar surface, should help engineers pick landing sites for future robotic and human expeditions to the moon, Zuber said.
'In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that this mission would have gone any better than it has,' she said, adding that NASA will be getting $8 million or $9 million back from the mission's $471 million budget.
The spacecraft will hit the surface at about 3,760 miles per hour. No pictures are expected because the region will be dark at the time of impact, but a sister spacecraft circling the moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will attempt to survey the crash site.
'These are two small spacecraft with empty fuel tanks, so we're not expecting a flash that is visible from Earth,' Zuber said.
The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft will plunge into a mountain near the moon's north pole, a site selected to avoid hitting any of the Apollo or other lunar relics.
The impacts, which are not expected to be visible from Earth, will take place about 20 seconds apart at 10.28pm UK time on Monday.
'They're going to be completely blown apart,' GRAIL project manager David Lehman, with Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call.
Crash landing site: The map shows the region
where the twin spacecraft of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior
Laboratory mission will impact on Monday
The two spacecraft, known as Ebb and Flow and each about the size of a small washing machine, have been flying in close formation around the moon for nearly a year to map the lunar gravity.
Scientists precisely measure the distance between the two, a figure that slightly changes as they fly over denser regions of the moon. The gravitational pull of the additional mass causes first the leading probe and then the following one to speed up, altering the gap between them.
Gravity maps from the first part of the mission, collected between March and May 2012 when the spacecraft were about 34 miles above the lunar surface, revealed the moon has a shallower and much more fractured crust than expected - the result of asteroid and comet impacts billions of years ago.
'We know that the moon had been bombarded by impacts but what we found is just how broken up and fractured the crust of the moon is,' said lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
New moon: This locations on the moon that NASA
considers 'lunar heritage sites' and the path GRAIL will take to avoid
hitting any of them
Impact: These 3D renderings show the lunar
mountain targeted by the GRAIL mission for controlled impact of the Ebb
and Flow spacecraft
'With Mars, there's a questions about where did the water that we think was on the surface go,' Zuber said. 'These fractures provide a pathway deep inside the planet and it's very easy to envision now how a possible ocean on the surface could have found its way deep into the crust.'
Scientists also discovered lava-filled subterranean cracks inside the moon, evidence that the body expanded early in its history.
In addition to planetary science, the gravity maps, along with detailed images of the lunar surface, should help engineers pick landing sites for future robotic and human expeditions to the moon, Zuber said.
'In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that this mission would have gone any better than it has,' she said, adding that NASA will be getting $8 million or $9 million back from the mission's $471 million budget.
The spacecraft will hit the surface at about 3,760 miles per hour. No pictures are expected because the region will be dark at the time of impact, but a sister spacecraft circling the moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will attempt to survey the crash site.
'These are two small spacecraft with empty fuel tanks, so we're not expecting a flash that is visible from Earth,' Zuber said.
One of a series of stunnign images captured by the 'MoonKam' aboard Ebb, taken just 35 miles above the moons surface
Spectacular: The twin Grail probes were launched into space last September aboard a Delta II rocket
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