Lockheed Martin’s Mooning MIT Maneuver

NASA has scheduled a new mission wherein the internal structure and gravitational forces of the Moon will be analyzed. This will, of course, require a spacecraft, and Lockheed Martin is only too happy to provide such for the project. Known as the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, this is the latest effort under NASA’s Discovery Program. Lockheed Martin will design, build and operate the spacecraft. The GRAIL mission is led by principal investigator, Maria Zuber, of MIT‘s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. With a budget of US$375m, also included is NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for mission management and also to develop the science instrumentation. Former astronaut Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, will lead the project’s educational outreach phase. This will include five live MoonKam cameras on each satellite that will be targeted by young students in their classrooms to get close-up still and video views of the moon’s surface.



The lunar mission will use two identical spacecraft orbiting the moon in a low, polar orbit. The spacecraft are based on the flight-proven XSS-11 technology demonstration satellite developed for the Air Force Research Laboratory. They will use Ka-band ranging instruments to send signals between one another. The data will then be relayed back to Earth to be analyzed. Scientists will examine the minute differences in distance the signals traveled between spacecraft. This will give unprecedented insight into the gravitational changes over the entire moon. During the three-month science phase of the mission, GRAIL will create a global, high-accuracy, high-resolution lunar gravity map. Such will provide a new understanding as to the history and internal structure of the moon, from crust to core. The mission is expected to launch in 2011—Denver, Colorado