Students Rename Spacecrafts Studying Moon

January 19, 2012 – The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A and –B for short, was a mouthful for the name of the twin NASA spacecraft studying the moon in unprecedented detail. But that mouthful is now a bit easier to remember, thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Montana. Fourth grade students from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School submitted the winning entry and new name, Ebb and Flow, in a nationwide school contest that began in October 2011. Nearly 900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia participated in the naming contest. In their entry, the students wrote, in part: “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.” The washing machine-sized spacecraft begin science operations in March, after a launch in September 2011 and achieved orbit around the New Year. "The 28 students of Nina DiMauro's class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "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." Zuber and Sally Ride, America's first woman in space and CEO of Sally Ride Science, selected the winning names. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Each spacecraft carries a small camera called GRAIL MoonKAM. Thousands of students in grades five through eight will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests for study to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. The winning prize for the Dickinson students is to choose the first camera images. "These spacecraft represent not only great science, but great inspiration for our future," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. "As they study our lunar neighbor, Ebb and Flow will undergo nearly the same motion as the tides we feel here on Earth."

The twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravity field, as depicted in this artist's rendering. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA launched twin spacecraft to moon to study the moon in September 2011. They achieved orbit around the New Year. Photo credit: NASA

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