Montana Students Pick Winning Names for Moon Craft
Twin NASA spacecraft that  achieved orbit around the moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have new names,  thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont.
PASADENA, Calif. -- Twin NASA spacecraft that  achieved orbit around the moon New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have new names,  thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont. Their winning entry, "Ebb  and Flow," was selected as part of a nationwide school contest that began  in October 2011.The names were submitted by fourth graders from the  Emily Dickinson Elementary School. Nearly 900 classrooms with more than 11,000  students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia participated  in the contest. Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A  and -B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft begin science operations in March,  after a launch in September 2011."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 in Cambridge, Mass. "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 in San Diego, selected the names following  the contest, which attracted 890 proposals via the Internet. The contest  invited ideas from students ages 5 to 18 enrolled in U.S. schools. Although everything  from spelling and grammar to creativity was considered, Zuber and Ride primarily  took into account the quality of submitted essays."With submissions from all over the United  States and even some from abroad, there were a lot of great entries to review,"  Ride said. "This contest generated a great deal of excitement in  classrooms across America, and along with it an opportunity to use that  excitement to teach science."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 (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students).  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. Dickinson is one of nearly 2,000 schools registered  for the MoonKAM program, which is led by Ride and her team at Sally Ride  Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of  California in San Diego."These  spacecraft represent not only great science, but great inspiration for our  future," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in  Washington. "As they study our lunar neighbor,  Ebb and Flow will undergo nearly the same motion as the tides we feel here on  Earth."Launched  in September 2011, Ebb and Flow will be placed in a near-polar,  near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During  their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon  and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets  in the solar system formed.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,  Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in  Washington. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's  Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems  in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in  Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.To read the winning submission visit:https://moonkam.ucsd.edu/about/spacecraft_names.  Information  about MoonKAM is available online at:https://moonkam.ucsd.edu. For more information about GRAIL visit:http://www.nasa.gov/grailorhttp://grail.nasa.gov.