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GRAIL-A Enters Lunar Orbit

Posted by timothy on from the holy-grail-moonman dept.

NASA's twin-craft GRAIL mission, launched way back in September (more information here), has successfully reached its destination. Grail-A has now entered lunar orbit; GRAIL-B is expected to enter lunar orbit tomorrow.

7 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. GRAIL huh? by rueger · · Score: 4, Funny

    Beware the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!

    --
    Three Squirrels
    1. Re:GRAIL huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      > You're a little off, Grail-A is Canadian, not European.

      How did you get modded up to +4 for that? Grail-A and B are American, not Canadian. Built by Lockheed Martin, a US company, in the US (Denver, specifically), and launched by NASA.

      Nothing against Canada, I love the place, but Grail is very much a US spacecraft.

      It's nuts that posts like that get modded up as "informative".

  2. Re:Why should I care? by c6gunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is no doubt good news, but why should I care? Folks I know, even in the IT sector, need jobs, period! ....
    These missions can wait till our economy gets better. What's wrong with that?

    Yep, shut down NASA and cancel all future projects - that ought to create more jobs!

    If you ever run for congress, I'm sure you'll have no problem getting elected.

  3. Re:Why should I care? by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The crisis we find ourselves in was partly created by projects like these

    NASA's budget represents less than 1% of the Federal budget. It peaked at around 5% during the Apollo years and has declined almost every year for the last two decades. If every Federal agency worked like that we wouldn't be worrying about turning into Greece.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  4. Re:Why should I care? by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If we listened to guys like you this would be a poorer world for it. Not all value in monetary. What is the value of information? It really is the source of all other value.

    Anyway, the time to complain about the cost was at the start of the project in 2006. The project cost around $500 million. All that money was spent here on Earth paying the wages of the guys who built the satellites and rocket and the people who supplied them. If you're worried about the deficit the first thing to look at is the fact that we spend on much on the military as the next 15+ countries combined.and half of those are allies. The US spends 43% of all money spent on the military in the world.

  5. Re:Why 3 months? by stjobe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why it took them so long to reach the Moon? Lunar transfer takes 3 days. Does anyone know?

    Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory:

    Unlike the Apollo program missions, which took three days to reach the Moon, GRAIL will make use of a three- to four-month low-energy trans-lunar cruise via the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1 to reduce fuel requirements, protect instruments and reduce the velocity of the two spacecraft at lunar arrival to help achieve the extremely low 50 km (31 mi) orbits with separation between the spacecraft (arriving 24 hours apart) of 175 to 225 km (109 to 140 mi)

    --
    "Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
  6. Re:Why 3 months? by macson_g · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is the ultimate answer:
    www.gg.caltech.edu/~mwl/publications/papers/lowEnergy.pdf

    It's amazing; it forced me to dust my rusty maths. Wonder if one could use it to create plugin for Orbiter...