It has played a significant part in our planets history, both geographical and historical. But our moon has been ultimately unexplored, except for a few locations where humanity has left their footprints. So an MIT study costing $375 million will attempt to rectify that matter, by conducted a study using a pair of satellites.
The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission is to be led by MIT professor Maria Zuber, and launched in 2011. Two separate satellites will be launched in to space, to orbit the moon. Their mission will be to precisely map the variations in the moons gravitational pull.
Our moon – without a viable atmosphere – has remained relatively unchanged over the millennia. As a result it acts as a sort of Rosetta stone for the inner-Solar system’s history. Thus, such an exhaustive study of the moon will also hopefully provide answers in to the history of planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
In addition, the gravitational studies will also provide future moon-landings with better information, helping to control decent and target desirable landing sites.
"After the three-month mission is completed, we will know the lunar gravitational field better than we know Earth's," says Zuber, who is head of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics.
The technology to be used in the twin satellites is a direct spinoff from the highly successful Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) which has been mapping Earth’s own gravitational field since 2002. This made the GRAIL mission a no-brainer for NASA, as there was “no risk” in already tested and proven systems.
However, in designing this new system there was one technological hill to climb. The GRACE satellites use the Global Positioning System to direct the movement of the satellites; for our moon, there is obviously no such help. Thus, the MIT team had to design a system that used radio frequencies to bypass such a problem.
This same technology subsequently allows this type of mission to be carried out on other planets obviously lacking a comprehensive GPS system. "We could learn amazing things" from such follow-up missions, Zuber says. "Since we solved the GPS problem for the moon, we could propose this with little modification for other planets."
This could be a big step forward in the study of Mars, our closest interstellar neighbor and the one we have focused much of our attention of late. Zuber believes that the GRAIL system could be used to reveal the exchange of carbon dioxide between the polar caps and atmosphere or the movement of flowing subsurface water.
Operated by Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, Colorado, the GRAIL satellites will be handled from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is in line to design the communications and navigation systems.
Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.
