NASA Crashes Twin GRAIL Spacecraft Into Moon. Impact Site Named After Dr. Sally Ride

Posted on December 17, 2012

NASA has crashed its twin GRAIL spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, into a mountain on the moon. The impact site was named after astronaut Sally Ride, who died earlier this year after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. NASA says the location of the Sally K. Ride Impact Site is on the southern face of an approximately 1.5-mile-tall (2.5-kilometer) mountain near a crater named Goldschmidt.

The GRAIL spacecraft have been orbiting the moon since January 1, 2012. They helped create new detailed high-resolution gravity field maps of the moon, like the one pictured above. NASA says the GRAIL missions "generated the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body."

SPACE