NASA's laboratory on Moon's orbit

According to NASA space agency, the first of two NASA satellites conducted research on the Moon has entered orbit.

>>>NASA's 'twins' on the moon

NASA officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the No. 1 Gravity Recovery Laboratory (GRAIL-A) entered the Moon's orbit at 22:01 GMT on December 31, 2011, GRAIL-B is expected to enter orbit at 22:05 on January 1, 2012.

The head of the GRAIL research group, Maria Zuber, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a previous statement that the mission to study the Moon this time will "rewrite the Moon's textbook of evolution . " The $ 500 million satellite is about the size of a washing machine that was launched on September 10 to map the Moon's inner core for the first time.

From March 2012, these two unmanned satellites will send radio signals that allow scientists on Earth to create high-resolution maps of gravity regions on the Moon, to understand. more than the surface as well as the origin of other crystals in the solar system.

This task is also expected to open up new discoveries about the undiscovered area of ​​the Moon and test the hypothesis that once existed a second Moon around the earth. The above two moon satellites took three months to reach the orbit of this celestial body instead of a three-day trip in the manned missions of the Apollo program. Two satellites have traveled four million kilometers since they were launched in September, according to NASA.

At 23 GMT on December 31, 2011, GRAIL-B was located more than 48,000 kilometers from the Moon and moved at 1,442 km / g, according to NASA. Scientists believe that the Moon was formed when a planet-sized object had crashed into the earth to knock out materials that later became a natural, airless, human satellite.

But why the Moon heats up, leading to the creation of a lava ocean that later hardened, remains a mystery, regardless of whether humans carried out 109 lunar missions from 1959 and 12. who stepped on this celestial surface.