posted 12-31-2016 04:54 AM               

Space Cover 398: GRAIL enter lunar orbit

I decided to show for this last weekend of the year or for the first weekend of next one, not one single cover but two covers.

These twin covers displayed for the closed lunar science mission GRAIL were postmarked from Pasadena, CA over a very appropriate space stamps and sported a rubber-stamp cachet for GRAIL.

GRAIL, what stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) were two spacecraft launched on September 10, 2011 from Cape Canaveral atop of Delta II rocket to map the structure interior of our natural satellite in the gravitational field.

As a lunar unmanned mission, the trajectory towards to Moon spent more than two days, as happened in the Apollo program, and was chosen by calculating a low energy-cost in the rocket Delta launch.

So, almost three months after launching, as scheduled on December 31, 2011 GRAIL A entered lunar orbit and next day, on January 1, 2012 GRAIL B did the same.

Lunar insertion was followed from Deep Space Stations in Goldstone, CA and Madrid, Spain.

At that time, I tried to get some covers from NASA-INTA Madrid tracking station, located in Robledo de Chavela, but unfortunately I was not lucky.

As Spanish Post traditionally closes on December 31, my covers were cancelled the previous day (and not later, as I required) and were returned to my address through postal circuit , what implicates that covers were cancelled again with a machine cancel in Madrid, from where were delivered by post.

During 11 months both spacecraft orbited Moon meanwhile science phases were divided in three mapping cycles of 27,3 days until last operational day on December 5, 2012.

Last mission phase was decommissioning the spacecraft by impacting on lunar surface, which occurred on December 17, 2012.

posted 01-04-2017 05:28 PM               

There was even an official KSC-NASA cachet cover printed in 2-colors, produced by my firm, which were available at the on-site viewing stations and NASA souvenir shops at Kennedy.

First U.S. woman space flier Sally Ride led the GRAIL educational and outreach programs through her company at the time, Sally Ride Science. Each satellite probe had four MoonKAM cameras that were controlled by students at the University of California at San Diego. Classrooms nationwide were permitted to request photos of the lunar surface that enabled students to analyze the images as they were posted on the GRAIL MoonKAM website, helping the students learn about the moon, gravity, and space. It was great educational tool for them.