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Summary NASA launches a pair of robotic probes designed to map the moons gravity.
An unmanned US rocket blasted off on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver twin robotic probes to the moon in the hope of learning what is inside.Launch of the Delta 2 rocket occurred two days later than planned due to high winds at the launch site and because of time required to review technical data on the rocket after its tanks were drained of fuel following an earlier launch scrub on Thursday.The twin satellites on board are headed to a point in space 932,0570 miles (1.5 million km) away where gravitational pull from the Sun and Earth balances out. From there, the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, satellites will make a long, slow approach to the moon, arriving on Dec. 31 and Jan 1. The twin GRAIL probes are designed to precisely map the moons gravity so scientists can learn what lies beneath the lunar crust and whether the moons core is solid, liquid or some combination of the two.Combined with high-resolution imagery, ongoing analysis of rock and soil samples returned by the 1969-1972 Apollo missions and computer models, the gravity maps are expected to fill in the biggest missing piece in the puzzle of how Earths natural satellite formed and evolved.United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, manufacture and provide launch services for the Delta 2 rocket. Lockheed Martin also is the prime contractor on the GRAIL satellites.The $496-million mission is managed by lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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