NASA ready for GRAIL spacecraft to crash into moon

Source: Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-grail-mission-conclusion-crash-20121213,0,1124143.story

NASA ready for GRAIL spacecraft to crash into moon

By Eryn Brown
December 13, 2012, 12:53 p.m.

In a series of planned maneuvers, NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft, nicknamed Ebb and Flow, will crash into a crater rim near the moon's North Pole about 2:28 p.m. Pacific time on Monday.

At a news conference on Thursday, scientists involved with the project, which is operated out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada-Flintridge, spoke about their work's end.

"The mission is almost over, it’s kind of sad to me," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager.

On Friday morning, he said, engineers at JPL would fire the engines to point the twin crafts, which are about the size of the washer-dryers you'd find in an apartment, toward their mountain target. Following that maneuver, they will turn off the spacecrafts' science instruments.

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