Humans turn Moon into extraterrestrial landfill
RUSSIA: Ebb and Flow gravity probes have crashed onto the Moon
after fulfilling their mission. The crash site was named after first
American female astronaut Sally Ride.
NASA has thus completed the GRAIL mission to study the gravitational
field of the moon. The mission cost the U.S. $496 million. It started in
September 2011, when two space probes were launched to the Earth’s
satellite.
Owing to the probes, scientists have received an accurate map of the
gravitational field of the moon. They will use the map to find out the
details of the internal structure of the moon and check several
hypotheses about the birth and evolution of the natural satellite.
Not that long ago, the probes ran out of fuel and could go out of
control any moment. NASA decided to down the twin probes by crashing
them into the Moon. The probes were flying at a speed 1.7 kilometers per
second and crashed one after the other with a difference of half a
minute.
“The engineers of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena
received a confirmation saying that the probes had completed the
collision with the Moon,” officials with the U.S. space agency said.
Noteworthy, a similar fate is in store for the European Space Telescope
Herschel. One may say that humans gradually turn the Moon into an
extraterrestrial landfill.
PRAVDA
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