To say the least, the moon is a fantastic wonderland getaway for the privileged few that get to play up there, especially on the dark side, the side humans aren't allowed to see with their home based telescopes. The side facing Earth has plenty of hidden activity too. The moon is not two moons that merged eons in the past as suggested by this article.
Lou
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-probes-arrive-moon-over-years-202554468.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The New Year's countdown
to the moon has begun.
NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on
course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 3½-month journey.
"We're on our way there," said project
manager David
Lehman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which
manages the $496 million mission.
The Grail probes — short for Gravity Recovery And Interior
Laboratory — won't land on the lunar surface. Instead, they were poised
to slip into orbit to study the uneven lunar gravity field.
Grail-A was scheduled to arrive on New
Year's Eve, followed by Grail-B on New Year's Day.
Lehman said team members won't celebrate
until both probes are safely in orbit.
It's been a long voyage for the
near-identical Grail spacecraft, which traveled more than 2½ million miles (3.22
million kilometers) since launching in September. Though the moon is relatively
close at about 250,000 miles (402317.35 kilometers)away, Grail took a roundabout
way to save on costs by launching on a small rocket.
Once at the moon, the probes will spend the
next two months tweaking their positions before they start collecting data in
March. The pair will fly in formation at an altitude of 34 miles (54.72
kilometers) above the surface, with an average separation of 124 miles (199.55
kilometers).
The mission's chief scientist, Maria Zuber of the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, said many aspects of the moon remain a mystery despite being
well studied.
"We actually know more about Mars ... than we do about our own moon," Zuber said.
One puzzle scientists hope to solve is why
the moon's far side is more hilly than the side that always faces Earth.
Research published earlier this year suggested that Earth once had dual moons
that collided and formed the moon that people gaze at today.
Despite the wealth of new knowledge expected
from the mission, NASA has no near-term plans to send astronauts back to the
moon. The Obama administration last year nixed the idea in favor of landing
astronauts on an asteroid and eventually Mars.
