NASA bombs the moon online
Two lunar twin probes GRAIL fulfilled their mission, exhausted the fuel supply and at the night of December 18 at 2:28 they would collapse on the lunar surface. Events in the mission control center will be broadcast online via two NASA channels. Unlike the previous “bombing”, NASA does not seem to expect any scientific information from the fall and only cares about the purity of space.
Record video broadcast. You can watch from 25:00
GRAIL probes started on September 10, 2011. That is, all the work was done almost for a year, which was fast enough for extraterrestrial space missions. The main task of two devices the size of a washing machine was a detailed study of the gravitational field of the moon.
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Thanks to their work, scientists were able to practically look at the moon under the bark.
It was possible to clarify the thickness of the cortex itself. It turned out that it had previously been overestimated. According to the seismometric survey conducted by the Apollo crews, the thickness of the bark was about 40-50 km. GRAIL determined the thickness of 30-40 km.
In addition, structures that do not appear on the surface and are visible only in the form of linear gravity anomalies were found in the crust.
These are dikes - cracks in the lower part of the crust, into which the mantle substance penetrated and froze in the form of such “scars”.
When the work of the satellites was done, and the fuel came to an end, NASA decided to stop the mission, dropping the satellites onto an unnamed mountain at the North Pole. The mountain was chosen due to the fact that the satellites flying in a very low orbit needed an obstacle with a steep angle. If they were simply dropped on a flat surface, they would have jumped like pancakes, scattering details throughout the district. Therefore, NASA decided to litter if it is compact.
They will become the most northern man-made objects on the moon. NASA, when sent them on their last journey, made sure that the satellites did not damage the previous human apparatuses on the Moon, which are already the property of history.
GRAIL - this is not the first objects that will be purposefully brought down on the moon. If not to count unsuccessful missions at the dawn of astronautics, two devices “dropped” for scientific purposes to the moon. The first was LCROSS, which delivered the LRO satellite to lunar orbit. LCROSS consisted of a Centaur accelerating stage and an apparatus that flew after it, analyzed the flash of the first explosion and fell, too.
The force of the explosion and the volume of the ejected substance then turned out to be almost 6 times weaker than predicted, so there was almost no trace of the fall from the Earth, although observers like amateur observatories in Hawaii were observed.
The second "bomb" falling on the moon is the shock probe of the Indian satellite Chandrayan-1, they did not even try to see it from the Earth, only the satellite itself monitored the results.
The size of the GRAIL is much smaller than the LCROSS, so there is practically no hope of seeing explosions from the earth from their fall. Even the Hubble orbital telescope would hardly have seen anything. But satellites have cameras, and LRO rotates in orbit of the Moon, so NASA will be able to get some visual and scientific information at the time of the crash.
An alternative to “bombing” could be the launch of satellites to L2 Lagrange where their position would be predictable and would not jeopardize future missions. But hitting is easier and more certain.
Record video broadcast. You can watch from 25:00
GRAIL probes started on September 10, 2011. That is, all the work was done almost for a year, which was fast enough for extraterrestrial space missions. The main task of two devices the size of a washing machine was a detailed study of the gravitational field of the moon.
')
Thanks to their work, scientists were able to practically look at the moon under the bark.
It was possible to clarify the thickness of the cortex itself. It turned out that it had previously been overestimated. According to the seismometric survey conducted by the Apollo crews, the thickness of the bark was about 40-50 km. GRAIL determined the thickness of 30-40 km.
In addition, structures that do not appear on the surface and are visible only in the form of linear gravity anomalies were found in the crust.
These are dikes - cracks in the lower part of the crust, into which the mantle substance penetrated and froze in the form of such “scars”.
When the work of the satellites was done, and the fuel came to an end, NASA decided to stop the mission, dropping the satellites onto an unnamed mountain at the North Pole. The mountain was chosen due to the fact that the satellites flying in a very low orbit needed an obstacle with a steep angle. If they were simply dropped on a flat surface, they would have jumped like pancakes, scattering details throughout the district. Therefore, NASA decided to litter if it is compact.
They will become the most northern man-made objects on the moon. NASA, when sent them on their last journey, made sure that the satellites did not damage the previous human apparatuses on the Moon, which are already the property of history.
GRAIL - this is not the first objects that will be purposefully brought down on the moon. If not to count unsuccessful missions at the dawn of astronautics, two devices “dropped” for scientific purposes to the moon. The first was LCROSS, which delivered the LRO satellite to lunar orbit. LCROSS consisted of a Centaur accelerating stage and an apparatus that flew after it, analyzed the flash of the first explosion and fell, too.
The force of the explosion and the volume of the ejected substance then turned out to be almost 6 times weaker than predicted, so there was almost no trace of the fall from the Earth, although observers like amateur observatories in Hawaii were observed.
The second "bomb" falling on the moon is the shock probe of the Indian satellite Chandrayan-1, they did not even try to see it from the Earth, only the satellite itself monitored the results.
The size of the GRAIL is much smaller than the LCROSS, so there is practically no hope of seeing explosions from the earth from their fall. Even the Hubble orbital telescope would hardly have seen anything. But satellites have cameras, and LRO rotates in orbit of the Moon, so NASA will be able to get some visual and scientific information at the time of the crash.
An alternative to “bombing” could be the launch of satellites to L2 Lagrange where their position would be predictable and would not jeopardize future missions. But hitting is easier and more certain.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/162945/
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