- Associated Press - Monday, September 5, 2011

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) Four decades after landing men on the moon, NASA is returning to Earth’s orbiting companion, this time with a set of robotic twins that will measure lunar gravity while chasing each other in circles.

By creating the most precise lunar-gravity map ever, scientists hope to figure out what’s beneath the lunar surface, all the way to the core. The orbiting probes also will help pinpoint the best landing sites for future explorers, whether human or mechanical.

Near-identical twins Grail-A and Grail-B - short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory - are due to blast off Thursday aboard an unmanned rocket.

Although launched together, the two washing-machine-size spacecraft will separate an hour into the flight and travel independently to the moon.

It will be a long, roundabout trip - three to four months - because of the small Delta II rocket used to boost the spacecraft. NASA’s Apollo astronauts used the mighty Saturn V rocket, which covered the approximately 240,000 miles to the moon in a mere three days.

NASA’s Grail twins will travel more than 2 million miles to get to the moon under this slower but more economical plan.

The mission, from start to finish, will cost $496 million.

The moon’s appeal is universal.

“Nearly every human who’s ever lived has looked up at the moon and admired it,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist Maria Zuber, Grail’s principal investigator. “The moon has played a really central role in the human imagination and the human psyche.”

Since the Space Age began in 1957, 109 missions have targeted the moon, 12 men have walked its surface during six landings, and 842 pounds of rock and soil have been brought back to Earth and are still being analyzed.

Three spacecraft are orbiting the moon and making science observations. A plan to return astronauts to the moon was nixed in favor of an asteroid and Mars.

Despite all the exploration, scientists still don’t know everything about the moon, Miss Zuber noted. For example, its formation still generates questions - Grail’s findings should help explain its origin - and its far side is still mysterious.

“You would think having sent many missions to the moon we would understand the difference between the near side and the far side, but in fact, we don’t,” she said.

Recent research suggests Earth may have had a second, smaller moon that collided with our present moon, producing a mountainous region. The Grail mission may help flush out that theory, Miss Zuber said.

Grail-A will arrive at the moon on New Year’s Eve, followed by Grail-B on New Year’s Day. They will go into orbit around the lunar poles and eventually wind up circling just 34 miles above the surface.

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