NASA’s Twin Probes Crashed Successfully onto Lunar Mountain

Ebb and Flow, the gravity mapping satellites of NASA ended the successful mission to Moon by crashing on the rim of crater. Lunar surface on which Ebb and Flow crashed will be given a name after Sally Ride, the first woman of America in the space who died earlier in 2012.

Ebb and Flow, two spacecrafts of NASA that comprised Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, on 14 December 2012 were commanded for landing in lower orbit of Moon which would create an impact on the mountain near its North Pole. Ebb and Flow were launched in September 2011 and were orbiting Moon since 1 January 2012. After a year of their arrival on Moon, the twin spacecrafts of NASA hit the lunar surface as it was planned at 5:28:51 pm EST and 5:29:21 pm EST respectively. The speed of the two was 1.7 kilometres per second.

The location of site is on southern face of around 2.5 kilometre tall Lunar Mountain near the crater called Goldschmidt. The principal investigator of GRAIL, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge declared that the lunar mission was complete and that they were proud to honour the contributions of Sally Ride after naming that corner of Moon’s surface after her.

The impact indicated that the GRAIL mission was complete. This was the first planetary mission of NASA which carried cameras that were completely dedicated to public outreach as well as education. Apart from the basic science instrument, the spacecrafts carried MoonKAM, the camera which captured over 115000 images of Moon’s surface.

Just fifty minutes before the impact, spacecraft fired the engines till propellant was exhausted. It was designed in such a way that it could determine exactly how much fuel was left in tanks. This would help the engineers of NASA to legalise computers for improving the predictions of quantity of fuel needed for missions in future.

Ebb and Flow were deliberately sent on the surface of Moon since there was not enough altitude or fuel remaining for continuing the science operations. The successful missions of these two spacecrafts produced highest resolution gravity field map in context with any celestial body till now. The scientists would take a lot of time, maybe years for analysing the data that is collected from Ebb and Flow.