Moon mission to explore Earth's origins

NASA plans on launching a pair of satellites early in September that will use gravity to help researchers understand the interior structure of the moon and how heat has affected it.

It's really more interesting that it sounds.

Understanding the moon inside-out%C2%A0will not only help researchers better%C2%A0know our nearest celestial neighbor, where someday humans will spend more than a few passing hours at a time, but also will give insight into how the Earth and other rocky planets formed.

"I predict we are going to find something ... that is really, really going to surprise us and turn our understanding of how the Earth and other terrestrial planets formed on its ear," Maria Zuber, the principal investigator with the mission, known as the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, said in a news briefing.

It's the latest in just under a dozen so-called discovery missions launched by NASA starting in 1992. These robotic missions aim to help us learn more about the solar system and include robot landers on Mars and visits to comets and asteroids.

Once the two satellites reach lunar orbit almost four months after the planned September 8 launch, they will use radio signals to precisely measure the distance between them. This distance will be affected by the gravitational pull of moon structures the satellites fly over, providing data for a highly precise map.

"The moon has played a central role in the human imagination and the human psyche. When people first landed on the moon in 1969, it really became a defining event for human civilization," Zuber said.