NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Tweetup at Kennedy Space Center

An Adult Field trip – GRAIL NASA tweetup

Neil deGrasse Tyson one  of the speakers at the education day for the GRAIL NASAtweetup called our day An Adult Field Trip. We were introduced to a lot of very smart people and told incredible amount of information. Science and Space brought to life before your eyes and ears. Models of rocket, pictures, and field trip to see the launch site. Yes it was a fantastic Adult Field Trip.

Have you ever seen those road crews with a tripod where they using sighting to figure out the line of sight. With GRAIL, Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory they will be measuring the gravity of the moon by using the distance and timing between aircraft. Their distance changes as the mass from the core to the surface mass changes.

GRAIL Tweetup (201109070005HQ) Attendees Photo Courtesy of NASA

“GRAIL is a mission that will study the inside of the moon from crust to core,” says Maria Zuber Principal Investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The GRAIL spacecraft will calculate the gravity as they encounter the moon rotation.

Once the spacecraft reach the moon they will maneuver  by slowing down and getting into the orbital formation planned for the mission. Getting into position will take about five weeks more after they get into lunar orbit. Once they are in position the missions three month science phase will begin.

“The lead spacecraft will accelerate, speed up, in response to a mass and cause the distance between the two to increase,” Zuber explains. “Then, as the second spacecraft comes over this greater mass, it will speed up and get closer to the first spacecraft. So we’re essentially taking the distance between two points, and watching how that distance changes.”

The day started with a tour of the Kennedy Space Center grounds and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with stops at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and Press Launch site for the now defunct Shuttles.

Vehicle Assembly Building VAB KSC NASA Kennedy Space Center Photo by Eileen Ludwig

What an amazing morning. the VAB had one of the shuttles, Endeavour, being decommissioned for its trip to Houston for display. The building itself is HUGE. All of the Shuttles were partially assembled in the VAB with multiple levels of platforms for workers to get to the shuttle. Realizing how many people were involved in putting together these ships for the Astronauts and Science is mind blowing.

Inside Vehicle Assembly Building VAB KSC Photo by Eileen Ludwig

Wishing I had gone more and paid more attention. Realizing how important these space discoveries and NASA has been to our way off life with all the many spin offs. Learning more now while NASA is transitioning into a new mission. There is so much more information to learn and spread the word.

Shuttle Endeavour NASA Kennedy Space Center Photo by Eileen Ludwig

We saw where the next mission to Mars with @marsCuriousity would be launch.

Speakers

KSC Meeting Room for NASAtweetup of GRAIL attendees Photo by Eileen Ludwig

See the Models on the Stage of Delta II Rocket and GRAIL

Charlie Bolden NASA administrator spoke to us first about plans for KSC and part of his mission has been NASAtweetups where bloggers get the word out about the advantage of science and space discoveries. Math and Science are important. We need a reliable and redundant access to space. Bolden has flown on four Space Shuttle Missions and helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope

Charlie Bolden NASA administrator and four time Shuttle Astronaut

Maria Zuber GRAIL principal investigator of Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke to us explaining the mission. The work that went into getting to launch and her exuberance on the day finally being here. This was the culmination of a lot of work by Team of people. Passionate about the moon. Understanding the moon we will understand more about the earth formation and other planets.

Maria Zuber and Jim Adams Photo Courtesy of NASA

Jim Adams @nasajim used twitter to ask if someone could make a website showing where people are on earth when viewing a launch and someone made it http://launchwatch.org/ Space Exploration changes our understanding of who we are in the universe.

Lt Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, from Star Trek spoke in place of Astronaut Sally Ride. If you can dream it, you can do it.

Capture Nichelle Nichols Captured  Photo Courtesy of NASA

Doug Ellison @doug_ellison  JPL Visualization Producer introduces to the  Eyes on the Solar System a 3d environment for exploring space from your computer. See the solar system in action.

Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson  astrophysicist – an inspiration about Science and Space – See the One hour Video Interview below to get a real sense of this man’s genius and humor . Our brain interferes with our senses.

Sami Asmar,  GRAIL deputy project scientist of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) talked about the precision and cost savings by going slow to the moon. Taking the money allotted and stretching it to be able to complete the mission.

The first day was long, amazing, wiildly educational and spurred a lot of questions and quest for more knowledge. What a great honor to have been one of the lucky 150 invited attendees to partake in such a great mission. To be invited into a group of great minds to share their work and for us to tweet it out and for bloggers or travel writers to do what we do best – WRITE

GRAIL-A is expected to reach the moon on New Year’s Eve of 2011; GRAIL-B will follow on New Year’s Day of 2012

GRAIL Captured Photo Courtesy of NASA

When we visited the Area where the Delta II rocket and GRAIL were inside a cage of grating like you see on the right in the above picture. We stood on the back of a truck bed to be able to get high enough to see over the fence. These pictures are taken with stationary photo cameras positioned for many angles of the Rocket and its launch . Students will be able to direct and take pictures of the moon through the MoonKAM program

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission. GRAIL is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

Educational interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Fantastic interview with astrophysics Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Colbert about Science and Space and very funny. Not about Grail but shows the level of expertise we had the pleasure of hearing on our Adult Field Day.  If for some reason that doesn’t work there is another site hosting the Video http://youtu.be/YXh9RQCvxmg

Twitter

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
• NASA

Articles before and after the NASAtweetup

• Christopher Arnold http://www.carnolddesigns.com/?p=1927
• Don Shetterly http://www.donshetterly.com/links_nasa-tweetup-grail_Sep-2011-speakers%20and%20tour.html
• Karyn Traphagen  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/09/21/space-its-not-just-for-astronauts-personal-reflections-from-a-nasatweetup/
• Eileen Ludwig http://www.freelancetourist.com/media-release-orange-county-resident-150-nasa-tweetup-grail-twin-lunar-delta-ii-rocket-launch/
• Technology Examiner http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-orlando/nasa-grail-twin-spacecraft-arrive-at-moon-new-years-eve-and-day

Video of GRAIL Launch

Video of the launch of Delta II rocket with the GRAIL Space craft http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=110729081

Video of GRAIL NASAtweetup part 1

Features some of the speakers not sure they got Part II working – there were some technological challenges

Video first gives you some overview of NASA then has some silence with before the recorded session starts. You can move the slider along to see where it starts somewhere around 6-9 minutes http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17125314

Resources

National Aeronautics and Space Administration  http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/grail/home.cfm

GRAIL Naming Contest http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/oct/HQ_11-335_GRAIL_Naming_Contest.html

Basics about the GRAIL Mission from NASA http://science.nasa.gov/missions/grail/

Pictures and more information on GRAIL http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/main/index.html

Wikipedia GRAIL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Interior_Laboratory

More details GRAIL http://discovery.nasa.gov/grail.cfml

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