GRAIL moon mission in final preparations for September launch
August 26, 2011 By DC Agle, Dwayne Brown and Caroline McCall
The payload fairing is added to the GRAIL booster. Credit: NASA/KSC
NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
GRAIL's twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail. They will determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and advance our understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.
"Yesterday's final encapsulation of the spacecraft is an important mission milestone," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent. Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating."
The spacecraft twins, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, will fly aboard a Delta II rocket launched from Florida. The twins' circuitous route to lunar orbit will take 3.5 months and cover approximately 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) for GRAIL-A, and 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) for GRAIL-B.
In lunar orbit, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them. Regional gravitational differences on the moon are expected to expand and contract that distance.
GRAIL scientists will use these accurate measurements to define the moon's gravity field. The data will allow mission scientists to understand what goes on below the surface of our natural satellite.
"GRAIL will unlock lunar mysteries and help us understand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved as well," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8 and extends through Oct. 19. On each day, there are two separate launch opportunities separated by approximately 39 minutes. On Sept. 8, the first launch opportunity is 8:37 a.m. EDT (5:37 a.m. PDT); the second is 9:16 a.m. EDT (6:16 a.m. PDT).
More information: To view live interviews with lunar scientists from noon to 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT) on Sept. 8 and 9, visit: http://www.livestr … am.com/grail .
Provided by
JPL/NASA
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Aug 26, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
Congratulations, Maria!
Have you considered using gravity anomaly measurements to look for evidence of a pulsar at the core of the Sun, as we discussed in Santa Flavia (near Palermo) ITALY on 11-15 June 2001 at a conference called "Asteroids 2001: From Piazzi to the Third Millennium"?
Our studies [1-3] suggest that the pulsar-centered Sun has dominant influence on Earth's changing climate.
1. Superfluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate, J Fusion Energy 21, 193-198 (2002)
www.omatumr.com/a...dity.pdf
2. Earths heat source the Sun, E & E 20, 131- 144 (2009)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704
3. Neutron repulsion, The APEIRON Journal (2011)
http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Aug 27, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Aug 27, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (3)
Great dogma, . . . Henry Kissinger and Chairman Mao even adopted it, and it works, . . .
if faith blinds one to observations [2-4].
1. The Bilderberg solar model, Solar Physics 3, 5-25 (1968): http://adsabs.har....3....5G
2. Global eruption rocks the Sun, (December 13, 2010)
http://science.na...ruption/
3. Vast solar eruption rocks NASA and raises doubts on sun theory, Astronomy & Space, Suite 101 (January 3, 2011):
www.sott.net/arti...n-Theory
http://wemustknow...-theory/
4. Neutron repulsion, The APEIRON Journal, preprint, in press, 19 pages (2011)
http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1
Aug 28, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
sorry for my english
It seems that you confused quasar with pulsar, as pulsar is high-spinning neutron star, and quasar is the active galactic core (feeding million solar mass black hole). Anyway there is no way for neutron star to reside in the Sun, it must be twice as Sun's mass.