NASA:Probe Joins The Twin The Moon in The New Year's Day

NASA:Probe Joins The Twin The Moon in The New Year's DayNASA started a new year with a pair of probes circling the Moon in the last mission understand how the Earth's nearest neighbor is formed.Spacecraft are twins and are called the Holy Grail. The purpose of the mission is to map the lunar Grail of the gravitational field. Quest for the Grail craft took 3.5 months to get them to the moon and covered 2.5 million miles. For comparison, it took the Apollo astronauts just three days to reach the moon.There was no champagne in the room to appear in the Mission Control Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Jet, when the spacecraft Grail back to back for the weekend of the new year, but some scientists and engineers say blowing rattles.

“This is a extremely good quality feeling to not one but two of our twins in orbit," project director David Lehman said Sunday after the mission was deemed successful.The action started in the New Year's Eve, when the Holy Grail, swung over the South Pole, fired its engine and braking into orbit around the moon. Not to be outdone, his twin Grail-B performed the same maneuvers in the New Year's Day.

Arrivals limited roundabout journey covering March 1 / 2months and cover 2 1 / 2 million miles (4.02 million miles).The moon had long admired. Galileo spotted mountains and craters, when he looked at her through a telescope. Poets and composers, watch the moon as a muse.
NASA:Probe Joins The Twin The Moon in The New Year's Day
Data collection will not begin until March, after a nearly identical spacecraft, to clarify its position and stamped only 34 kilometers above the surface. While scientists are focused on gravity, high school students have the opportunity to take their own pictures of the moon using cameras on board the probe into the project, headed by Sally Ride, first American woman in space.

There's already talk about trying to extend $ 496 million mission, which was scheduled to end before the partial lunar eclipse in June. Scientists at first thought, a solar-powered probes, which have survived for a long time, but changed their minds during the long journey to the moon after receiving new data.

Researchers expect the Grail back a lot of data, but this information will not be manned lunar guide to travel in the near future. The Obama administration last year scrapped plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface in favor of landing on an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.