UPDATED: GRAIL probes impact on Moon

Note that Sally Ride was personally involved in the GRAIL mission as the leader of its public outreach & education program, a really cool project called "MoonKAM" that let middle school kids take their very own photos of places on the moon using several digital cameras on the GRAIL spacecraft. These cameras had nothing to do with GRAIL's primary science mission; their whole reason for being on the spacecraft was letting tens of thousands of kids literally do some actual space exploration of their own (admittedly without actually traveling anywhere further than the computer in their classroom :-) As a second bonus, the behind the scenes spacecraft ops and camera control commanding and scheduling to make this all happen was orchestrated by undergrad aerospace student interns working with Prof. Ride at UCSD. So not only do you get middle school students excited about science, you end up training NASA's next flight controllers too.

This was a super impressive and innovative outreach program, for which Sally Ride deserves much credit. I was lucky enough to hear her speak on this topic shortly before she passed away; she gave the talk via videoconference, and I never would have guessed she was so ill. She was working hard and so passionate about education to the end. It's very fitting the GRAIL's resting place on the moon be named in her honor.

Note that Sally Ride was personally involved in the GRAIL mission as the leader of its public outreach & education program, a really cool project called "MoonKAM" that let middle school kids take their very own photos of places on the moon using several digital cameras on the GRAIL spacecraft. These cameras had nothing to do with GRAIL's primary science mission; their whole reason for being on the spacecraft was letting tens of thousands of kids literally do some actual space exploration of their own (admittedly without actually traveling anywhere further than the computer in their classroom :-) As a second bonus, the behind the scenes spacecraft ops and camera control commanding and scheduling to make this all happen was orchestrated by undergrad aerospace student interns working with Prof. Ride at UCSD. So not only do you get middle school students excited about science, you end up training NASA's next flight controllers too.

This was a super impressive and innovative outreach program, for which Sally Ride deserves much credit. I was lucky enough to hear her speak on this topic shortly before she passed away; she gave the talk via videoconference, and I never would have guessed she was so ill. She was working hard and so passionate about education to the end. It's very fitting the GRAIL's resting place on the moon be named in her honor.