GRAIL was a half-billion-dollar mission to weigh the Moon. It also handed four cameras to schoolchildren. This is the human record of that decision, recovered from the program's own newsletters, the Newsflash, along with its press kit and student guide.
When GRAIL launched in September 2011, its twin spacecraft were still called GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B. NASA, JPL and Sally Ride Science asked American students to name them. Nine hundred schools and more than 11,000 students, from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, entered.
It was won by Nina DiMauro's fourth-grade class, 28 students, at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana. Their teacher had nearly deleted the contest email. Her class researched the Moon and tides, and landed on two words.
“We have been studying the Solar System and learning about the Sun, Planets, and the Moon. We think Ebb and Flow (or Flood) are good names for Grail-A and Grail-B because the Moon's gravity is the reason we have high tides and low tides. We thought it would be good to have names that represent something very important about the moon and what it causes to happen on Earth. Grail-A and Grail-B are on a journey just like the Moon is on a journey around Earth.”
Their prize was to choose the first images the cameras ever took. Those first frames are the ones in the recovered archive.
“The 28 students of Nina DiMauro's class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head. We were really impressed that the students drew their inspiration by researching GRAIL and its goal of measuring gravity. Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission.” Maria Zuber · GRAIL principal investigator, MIT
"While the GRAIL satellites gather information that will unlock the mysteries of the Moon's origin, your class will be in command of the four MoonKAM cameras on board the GRAIL spacecraft." MoonKAM Student Mission Operations Center guide
It was not a simulation. A classroom logged into the Student Mission Operations Center, read a table of upcoming orbits, and picked a spot on the Moon by clicking the daytime stretch of a spacecraft's ground track. Each student held one-time codewords, each locked to a spacecraft and a day, and spent one to command a single photograph. Days later, the image came back.
Those codewords are the same request codes still embedded in the filenames of the recovered images. It is how each surviving frame can be matched to the day, the camera and the orbit that made it.
A MoonKAM poetry contest ran alongside the imaging. Lilith B., age 13, at Strough Junior High in Rome, New York, won an autographed copy of Sally Ride's book for this.
I know these two cool satellites Three months ago they launched their flight Up, up to the moon they go But they seem to move so vexingly slow We held our breath as the time passed And let out a cheer when they got there at last The GRAIL sibling B follows GRAIL A Moving around the moon collecting data along the way Skipping like tourists around the moon Taking pictures on MoonKAM that will arrive at schools soon We cant wait until their work is done So we can analyze all their data for fun
A year later, when principal investigator Maria Zuber visited a fifth-grade class, a boy named Takill Armstrong told her he hoped to walk on the Moon someday, just like his namesake, Neil.
Whitney Mullen watched the launch from Cape Canaveral, about a hundred feet from the pad, for the Newsflash.
We were about to be the first group of people to see the GRAIL spacecraft, tucked safely inside its payload fairing, sitting atop the powerful and historic Delta II Heavy rocket. Cameras flashed and Dr. Sami Asmar looked on with us as the support tower slowly, almost unnoticeably, backed away from the rocket in the dead of night. We stood in awe, just 100 feet away from the launch pad. Whitney Mullen · "GRAIL is a GO!", Newsflash Vol. 1, Issue 4
Upper-level winds scrubbed the first attempts. Each launch window was one second long. On the third day, it flew.
The Newsflash profiled the mission's scientists and engineers next to the teachers using it. Several of the engineers were young women a few years out of school.
Grew up in rural Pennsylvania scanning the sky with a telescope she built with her grandfather. "If you want to get an idea of what was going on in the earliest solar system, the Moon is a good place to look."
An aerospace engineering senior who worked out where the spacecraft could photograph. "Seeing, hearing, and feeling the Delta II rocket lift off was definitely one of the more exciting moments of my life."
An SDSU aerospace graduate, often the only woman in her classes, who made sure the whole system, from software to the Deep Space Network, could talk to itself.
Commanded the twins to point at each other for gravity mapping. Studied aerospace engineering at MIT; credits a childhood science teacher, Mr. Taylor.
And the teachers, from Fort Worth to Tampa to Lubbock. Marilyn Ortiz brought MoonKAM to fifth graders who, she said, "had never been exposed to science at all," including special-education students and kids on free and reduced lunch. Dr. Zuber came to her classroom in person.
"We learned so much about the Moon. Today my students know more about the Moon than what is required by the curriculum standards." Marilyn Ortiz · 5th-grade teacher
The program's education and outreach was led by Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, through her company Sally Ride Science. MoonKAM was one of her last projects. She died in July 2012, months after the students took their pictures.
"This contest generated a great deal of excitement in classrooms across America, and along with it an opportunity to use that excitement to teach science." Sally Ride
When the mission ended in December 2012, both spacecraft were steered into a mountain near the Moon's north pole. NASA named the impact site the Sally K. Ride Impact Site.
“Sally was all about getting the job done, whether it be in exploring space, inspiring the next generation, or helping make the GRAIL mission the resounding success it is today. As we complete our lunar mission, we are proud we can honor Sally Ride's contributions by naming this corner of the Moon after her.” Maria Zuber
In the very first Newsflash, before any of this happened, an educator named Leesa Hubbard wrote about why the cameras were there at all.
"Hopefully some of those students will have their own reverent moment. You never know what the catalyst will be in a student's education." Leesa Hubbard · Newsflash Vol. 1, Issue 1
The program described the destination to the children this way: a place where the sky is always black, the sun rises and sets every two weeks, and a person who weighs 100 pounds on Earth would weigh about 17, and could jump like a kangaroo. The Earth, it said, "might be visible as a glowing blue marble in the inky sky."
The science behind the school project, from the mission's own fact sheet and press kit.