The lunar satellites were previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A and -B. Not particularly inspired names, and Nasa agreed. The agency put out a call for a better pair of names to more than 11,000 students around the US.
The classroom of nine- and ten-year-olds came up with Ebb and Flow. The name ties in to the duo's mission to measure lunar gravity, and there's an obvious link between the Moon's gravity and the ebb and flow of tides on Earth.
"Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission," said Maria Zuber, Grail principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zuber and Sally Ride -- America's first woman in space -- chose the winning names.
As well as having their winning name indelibly linked to Nasa's lunar probes, they also win first dibs on where the probes will study.
Each washing machine-sized spacecraft has a camera called GRAIL MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students), which beams photos back to Earth. Kids in grades five through eight will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests for study -- the Emily Dickinson students get to choose the first target.
Ebb and Flow launched in September 2011, and achieved achieved orbit around the moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day 2012. They will be placed in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles, and begin science operations in March 2012.
The two probes will be in the same orbit around the Moon, and as they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity -- caused by mountains and craters and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface -- they'll veer away from each other or pull closer together. The onboard Lunar Gravity Ranging System will measure changes in the distance between the two spacecraft down to a few microns, thus producing an accurate map of lunar gravity.
The mission will also answer longstanding questions about the Moon, interrogate its interior and thermal history, and give cosmologists a better understanding of how the Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.
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