Why NASA's Moon Twins Are Crashing At The Lunar North Pole Later Today
Items On Earth's Moon This graphic highlights locations on the moon NASA considers "lunar heritage sites," and the path NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft will take to avoid them. The Apollo 11, 12, 14, 16 and 17 landing sites are indicated with green circles. The Surveyor sites are indicated with yellow squares. The Soviet Union's Luna and Lunakhod landing sites are indicated with red diamonds and red squares, respectively. The ground track for the Ebb and Flow spacecraft during their final half-orbits is shown in black. The maps are color-coded by topography. Red and white indicate the high areas. Blue and violet indicate low areas. NASA/JPL-CaltechWatch live commentary of the spacecrafts' demise later this afternoon. Last time the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided live spacecraft commentary, it was for the white-knuckle landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. Today's will be somewhat less exciting--the demise of the twin lunar probes...