GRAIL Launch Less Than One Month Away

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

Feature: 2011-251 Aug. 11, 2011

GRAIL Launch Less Than One Month Away

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-251&cid=release_2011-251

NASA's twin lunar probes – GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - completed their final inspections and were weighed one
final time at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla., on Tuesday. The two Gravity Recovery
and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft will orbit the moon in formation to determine the structure of the
lunar interior from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the
moon. GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8, 2011, and extends through Oct. 19. For a Sept. 8 liftoff, the
launch window opens at 5:37 a.m. PDT (8:37 a.m. EDT) and remains open through 6:16 a.m. PDT (9:16 a.m.
EDT).

Later this week, the two spacecraft will be loaded side-by-side on a special adapter and packaged inside a
payload fairing that will protect them during their launch into space. Next week, GRAIL is expected to make
the trip from Astrotech to Launch Complex 17 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where it will be mated
with its United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy rocket.

GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will fly in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity
field in unprecedented detail. The mission 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.

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, 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.

More information about GRAIL is online at: http://grail.nasa.gov .

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