| Jan. 17, 2012: The twin GRAIL spacecraft have been renamed Ebb and Flow.
The winning suggestions came from the fourth grade class of Nina DiMauro at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont.
Her students wrote, "We have been studying the Solar System and learning about the Sun, Planets, and the Moon. We think Ebb and Flow (or Flood) are good names for Grail-A and Grail-B because the Moon's gravity is the reason we have high tides and low tides. We thought it would be good to have names that represent something very important about the moon and what it causes to happen on Earth. Grail-A and Grail-B are on a journey just like the Moon is on a journey around Earth."
For more information, read the News Release.
To see the full recording of the announcement, link to: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19827036.
An edited version of the announcement is available at:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/grail/videos/grail20120117-480-cc.mov.
The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission is designed to create a gravity map of the moon, using two spacecraft that orbit the moon at very precise distances. The mission will enable scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition, and give scientists a better understanding of the moon's origin. Accurate knowledge of the moon's gravity could also be used to help choose future landing sites on the moon.
GRAIL's student-run MoonKAM cameras will provide close-up views of the lunar surface, taking tens of thousands of images and sending them back to Earth.
|
|
