Moon Dive?
Doesn't have the same ring to it (or effect) as "Sun Dive"!
The two orbiters that make made up NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) have smashed into a lunar mountain at a speed of 3,760 mph as part of the mission's last experiment. The two craft, named Ebb and Flow, have spent the last year building a map of the gravitational forces within the moon. They also …
Indeed, a pint for the boffins.
They seem to be doing well with these "smaller and cheaper" missions - this pair plus of course Spirit and Opportunity all came in on or under budget and gave much more back than their original planning briefs asked of them. All in all perhaps there is some hope for the future in space after all...
I like how CNN's article described certain aspects of the crash.
They first tell that they named the place where the crashed occurred after the first American astronaut in space. Then, in the next paragraph, they describe the probes as being about the size of a washer and dryer (they misspelled dryer as "dyer"). They then go on to detail the "dykes" under the surface.
I am easily amused.
Some fruit flies went up in a V2. Mice have gone into space in Aerobee rockets, but I cannot find names or sexes for them until 1952: Mildred and Albert rode a rocket with two Phillipine monkeys named Patricia and Mike. Laika did not orbit until 1957, but rocket dogs Dezik and Tsygan made sub-orbital flights in 1951.
Wot? Is this a male thing - honoring women with a crash landing site or is this an inference that female astronauts crash (make mistakes) more in space than men?
men used to infer this on earth, until they realised women had cheaper insurance policies cos they were SAFER!
heavens above. let's ee how many men venture to Venus!
> women had cheaper insurance policies cos they were SAFER!
This is incorrect.
Women had cheaper policies because they were a lower statistical risk. If you think that makes them "safer drivers", consider the number of car crashes recorded where a white mouse was at the wheel...
Vic.
"The two orbiters that made up NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) have smashed into a lunar mountain at a speed of 3,760 mph as part of the mission's last experiment."
Well, they're claiming it was an experiment! The truth is that they'd discovered that there was a Nazi base under that mountain, and they crashed the two probes into it to destroy it.