The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission is scheduled to launch 8 September 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail.
Scientists will use the gravity field information from the two satellites to X-ray the moon from crust to core to reveal the moon's subsurface structures and, indirectly, its thermal history, according to mission scientists at MIT.
Following GRAIL, NASA will launch the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), a NASA mission that will orbit the Moon with the main objective to characterize the atmosphere and lunar dust environment. It is now scheduled for launch January 15, 2013 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on a a Minotaur V launch vehicle.
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