The two satellites were originally named GRAIL A and B which are rational but rather dull choices to be honest. So NASA issued a naming contest for American schoolchildren between ages 5 and 18. A whopping number of essays were received from 890 classrooms with more than 11000 students. The names were selected by Maria Zuber, the PI of the mission and Sally Ride former astronaut and leader of the MoonKAM educational program.

Leland Melvin, NASA Associate Administrator for Education, left, Maria Zuber, GRAIL Prinicipal Investigator at MIT, and James Green, from the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, right, applaud the students.

The winning essay came from the 28 students of Nina DiMauro's 4^th grade class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Montana. Ebb and Flow catches the most profound, daily effect of the Moon's gravity on Earth. And the GRAIL mission is all about the lunar gravity.

Nina DiMauro and her class.

The students also won the prize to choose the first target of MoonKAM to photograph. The MoonKAM suite is the first, exclusively educational program on a NASA satellite and so far more than 2100 classrooms singed up to participate. The first images will be shot shortly after the science phase begins on March 8.

For more details about GRAIL, check out our earlier pieces about the mission.

László Molnár

Image credits:

1.) NASA

2.) NASA / Paul E. Alers

3.) Emily Dickinson Elementary School / Sally Ride Science