Tags: NASA, Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, Satellite Collision
Publication: SlashGear.com
Publication Date: 12/18/2012

Artist’s depiction of the twin spacecraft (Ebb and Flow) that comprise NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. Image credit: NASA

NASA announced it has successfully crashed its two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) twin satellites into the moon. The new crater created by the impact was named after Sally Ride, the first American woman in LEO.

The spacecraft were commanded to descend into a lower orbit to force the impact against a mountain near the moon’s north pole with the objective of collecting internal structure and composition data about the moon. The exact size of the Sally Ride Impact Site won’t be known until the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flies above it in a few weeks.

The GRAIL mission’s two satellites, Ebb and Flow, orbited the moon for almost a year, transmitting more than 115,000 images of its surface. According to NASA, the mission provided the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body, and it will take a few years to analyze all the data the mission gathered.

As the satellites’ fuel tanks emptied, GRAIL operators decided to get something more out of the end of the mission. The coordinated crash now brings new opportunities to study what makes up the crust of the moon.

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