The GRAIL XM (Extended Mission) was chosen to map the gravity at the even closer mean altitude of 25 km for three months beginning in September 2012.

GRAIL is a NASA PI (Principal Investigator) mission lead by Maria Zuber of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Cambridge, MA, USA. The science payload ranging antennas are in thermal enclosures and are mounted so that they are nominally on the line between the two spacecraft’s centers of mass. In addition to MIT, GRAIL’s science team includes NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), JPL, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the University of Arizona, the University of Paris, and the SwRI (Southwest Research Institute). Spacecraft-to-spacecraft tracking observations from the GRAIL mission have been used to construct a gravitational field of the Moon to spherical harmonic degree and order 420. • GRAIL’s XM (Extended Mission) initiated on August 30, 2012, was successfully completed on December 14, 2012. The mission was designed to avoid the December 10th, 2011 and June 4th 2012 lunar eclipses which interfere with the mission. The spacecraft will fly at a nominal altitude of 50 kilometers and average separation of 200 kilometers.

(725 kilograms).The spacecraft took 3.5 months to get to the moon, traveling along a path that reduced the spacecraft's fuel requirements and allowed more time to monitor the spacecraft and look for gas jetting from the lunar surface.The GRAIL spacecraft approached the moon under the lunar south pole and then entered moon orbit — GRAIL-A on Dec. 31, 2011, and GRAIL-B on Jan. 1, 2012. The data collection phase of the mission lasted from 7 March 2012 to 29 May 2012, for a total of 88 days. The GRAIL mission is the only mission in history, prior to 2012, to implement a low-energy transfer to a low-altitude orbit about the Moon as part of its primary mission. The spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit of 90 km x 8,363 km around the moon that takes approximately 11.5 hours to complete. The research reveals that the familiar blotches that make up “the man in the moon”, from the vantage point of Earth, happened because the moon’s crust is thinner on the near side than the far side to our planet. The system-level CDR was held November 9–13, 2009 at MIT in Cambridge, MA. TSM-B2 on Feb. 24 2012 slowed the drift rate. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.


- Global crustal volume; extent of melting Jan. 2, 2012 – Feb. 6, 2012 The GRAIL mission will place two spacecraft into the same orbit around the Moon.

The data collected at the shorter separation distances enable determination of the higher-order gravity coefficients that describe shorter-wavelength and shallow structure, whereas that collected at the longer distances favors determination of the lower-order coefficients that describe longer-wavelength and deeper structure (Ref. The Goldstone complex will implement initial acquisition including solar array deployment.

The new map, created by the GRAIL mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Several samples have been returned from the lunar surface which allow for a strong base understanding of the lunar composition. Grail-A and Grail-B are on a journey just like the Moon is on a journey around Earth."

Hydrazine thruster system Variations in the gravity field cause the range between the two satellites to vary.

The LGRS transmitted radio signals that precisely defined the distance between the two spacecraft. • After OPR, the spacecraft goes through a month long TSF (Transition to Science Formation) phase during which a series of maneuvers establish the proper formation and separation between the two spacecraft prior to the start of science collection. Because the crash site was in the shadows, the team had to wait for the plumes to rise high enough to be visible in the sunlight.

However, these data sets are poor for the backside of the Moon as they rely on DSN (Deep Space Network) coverage of a single spacecraft. On December 6, 2012, the average altitudes of the two GRAIL orbiters were lowered by another factor of two, to 11 km. These signals allowed the spacecraft to accurately map the gravity of the lunar surface.GRAIL was also NASA's first planetary mission to carry instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.

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