NASA marks 2012 with twin probes in moon orbit

LOS ANGELES – NASA kicked off the new year with a pair of probes circling the moon in the latest mission to understand how Earth’s closest neighbor formed.

There was no champagne popping in the mission control room at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the Grail – short for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory – spacecraft arrived back-to-back over the New Year’s weekend, but several scientists and engineers celebrated by blowing noisemakers.

“It’s a really good feeling to have not one but two of our twins in orbit,” project manager David Lehman said Sunday after the mission was deemed successful.

The action began on New Year’s Eve when Grail-A swung over the south pole, fired its engine and braked into orbit around the moon. Not to be outdone, its twin Grail-B executed the same maneuvers on New Year’s Day.

The arrivals capped a roundabout journey spanning 3  1/2 months and covering 2  1/2 million miles.

Since the dawn of the Space Age, more than 100 missions launched by the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, China and India have targeted Earth’s companion. NASA flew six Apollo missions that landed twelve men on the lunar surface and brought back more than 800 pounds of rock and soil samples.

Scientists expect to learn more about how the celestial body formed using Grail’s gravity measurements that will indicate what’s below the surface.

Data collection won’t begin until March after the near-identical spacecraft refine their positions and are circling just 34 miles above the surface. While scientists focus on gravity, middle school students will get the chance to take their own pictures of the moon using cameras aboard the probes as part of a project headed by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

There’s already chatter about trying to extend the $496 million mission, which was slated to end before the partial lunar eclipse in June. Scientists initially did not think the solar-powered probes would survive that long, but changed their minds during the long cruise to the moon after getting new data.

Researchers expect Grail to return a plethora of data, but that information won’t be a guide to manned lunar missions anytime soon. The Obama administration last year scrapped a plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface in favor of landing on an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.