The GRAIL team is staffed with experienced management and scientific personnel with specific experience in Earth and planetary gravity mapping investigations. The Project Scientist, Mission System Manager, and Instrument Manager on GRAIL had the same roles on GRACE.
GRAIL's Principal Investigator is Dr. Maria T. Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is assisted by the GRAIL Deputy PI, Dr. David E. Smith of NASA's Goddard Spacecraft Center. Drs. Zuber and Smith have led 12 experiments to map gravity and topography of planetary bodies.
The GRAIL mission will be implemented by teams at JPL and LM. JPL will provide project management, system engineering, safety and mission assurance, mission design, payload development, navigation and mission operations. GRAIL's Project Manager is David H. Lehman, who served as project manager of the successful Deep Space-1 mission. The Lockheed Martin spacecraft manage is John Henk, who led Assemble Test and Launch Operations for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions.
The Science Team includes Project Scientist (PS) Dr. Michael M. Watkins (JPL) who was the PS on GRACE. He is assisted by Deputy Project Scientist Sami Asmar, who has extensive experience with radio science investigations on several Mars missions. Co-investigators Alex Konopliv, and Frank Lemoine, along with Dave Smith have produced previous lunar gravity models including the Clementine and Lunar Prospector (LP) models. Four of the Science Team members (Frank Lemoine, Greg Neumann, Dave Smith, Maria Zuber) have ties to current lunar missions (LRO and Kaguya/SELENE) and thus provide a linkage to the ongoing advances in lunar science and exploration. The team also includes planetary geophysicists with interests in lunar structure and evolution (Jay Melosh, Greg Neumann, Roger Phillips, Dave Smith, Sean Solomon, Mark Wieczorek, Maria Zuber). The team includes expertise in lunar laser ranging and deep-interior structure (Jim Williams) and scientific use of the Deep Space Network (Asmar).
Management by Institution
MIT
Maria Zuber, PI
- GRAIL Project Lead
- Science Team Lead
Lockheed Martin (LM)
John Henk, Project Manager
- spacecraft design, manufacturing
- quality assurance
- payload integration on spacecraft
- spacecraft integration and test
- launch operations
Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
David Smith, DPI
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
David Lehman, Project Manager
- project management
- systems engineering
- mission design/navigation
- Ka-band ranging instrument fabrication, integration and test
- Mission assurance
Sally Ride Science
Sally Ride, President and CEO
- Education and Public Outreach, including MoonKAM project
