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Lockheed Martin Space Systems… Twins On Their Way (Spacecraft)


On May 20, 2011, Lockheed Martin shipped NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft from Buckley Air Force Base to Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport plane.
[SatNews] Final testing and processing for four months is on the schedule…

NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft were delivered by its builder, Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT], to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on May 20th. The two vehicles will undergo four months of final testing and processing in preparation for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy launch vehicle in early September. The lunar orbiters will fly 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the surface of the moon in precision formation to determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.


Tim Welton from Lockheed Martin gives the thumbs up for the environmentally controlled container and spacecraft to be winched up onto the ramp of the C-17 plane.
Both of the 440-pound (200 kilograms) spacecraft were transported on an Air Force C-17 transport plane in an environmentally controlled container. The plane departed from Buckley Air Force Base near Denver and touched down at 7:40 p.m. EDT at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility. The spacecraft were then transported to Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., for final launch processing. The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will fly nearly-identical spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission will also answer longstanding questions about Earth’s moon, and provide scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission’s principal investigator Dr. Maria Zuber. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.