New NASA Mission to Reveal Moon's Internal Structure and Evolution

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DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Grey Hautaluoma 202-358-0668
Headquarters, Washington
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov
NEWS RELEASE: 2007-145 December 11, 2007

New NASA Mission to Reveal Moon's Internal Structure and Evolution

At a Monday, Dec. 10 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, NASA's Associate
Administrator for Science Alan Stern announced the selection of a new mission that will
peer deep inside the moon to reveal its anatomy and history.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will manage the Grail mission. The
spacecraft will be built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or Grail, mission is a part of NASA's
Discovery Program. It will cost $375 million and is scheduled to launch in 2011. Grail
will fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure
its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission also will 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.

"Grail's revolutionary capabilities stood out in this Discovery mission competition owing
to its unsurpassed combination of high scientific value and low technical and
programmatic risk," Stern said. "Grail also offers to bring innovative Earth studies
techniques to the moon as a precursor to their possible later use at Mars and other
planets."

Scientists will use the gravity field information from the two satellites to X-ray the moon
from crust to core to reveal the moon's subsurface structures and, indirectly, its thermal
history.

The study technique Grail will use was pioneered by the joint U.S.-German Earth
observing Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or Grace, mission launched in
2002. The Grace satellites measure gravity changes related to the movement of mass
within Earth, such as the melting of ice at the poles and changes in ocean circulation. As
with Grace, both Grail spacecraft will be launched on a single launch vehicle.

Grail's principal investigator is Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Cambridge. Zuber's team of expert scientists and engineers includes former NASA
astronaut Sally Ride, who will lead the mission's public outreach efforts. A camera
aboard each spacecraft will allow students and the public to interact with observations
from the satellites. Each Grail spacecraft will carry the cameras to document their views
from lunar orbits.

Grail will support NASA's exploration goals as the agency returns humans to the moon
by 2020. In 2008, the agency will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to circle the
moon for at least a year and take measurements to identify future robotic and human
landing sites. The orbiter also will look for potential lunar resources and document
aspects of the lunar radiation environment. After a 30-year hiatus, the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter represents NASA's first step toward returning humans to the
moon. The orbiter will be accompanied by another spacecraft, called the Lunar Crater
Observation and Sensing Satellite mission, which will impact the lunar south pole to
search for evidence of polar water frost.

"As NASA moves forward with exploration endeavors, our lunar science missions will be
the light buoy leading the path for future human activities," said Jim Green, director of
the Planetary Division, Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Created in 1992, NASA's Discovery Program sponsors a series of scientist-led, cost-
capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. The Grail
proposal was selected from 24 submissions in response to a 2006 Announcement of
Opportunity for the program. Proposals were evaluated for scientific merit, science
implementation merit, and technical, management and cost feasibility.

For more information about NASA's Discovery Program, visit:

http://discovery.nasa.gov/ .

-end-

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