NASA Spacecraft Crash Live Stream: Two GRAIL Probes Smash into Moon

NASA will live stream the organization's fond farewell to two of its most valued former employees as it crashes them into the moon Monday.

Check out the live stream on NASA's website here.

The retirees, The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) ships, twin NASA orbiters Ebb and Flow, have completed their missions mapping lunar gravity and are getting the kind of send off only NASA and Bond villains can offer. The spacecrafts are on a one-way trip to crash into a mountain on the moon, and NASA will be live streaming the cosmic event in and providing commentary, earthsky.com reports.

Ebb and Flow are set to collide with the moon around 5:28 EST near the moon's north pole. However, this won't be a demolition derby style crash; NASA says not to expect any Michael Bay space visuals, the crash point will be shrouded in shadow when the probes make contact with the surface of the moon.

Regardless, NASA is still providing about 35 minutes of commentary and coverage during the celestial retirement from the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., with interviews from NASA team members and control room chaos.

Ebb and Flow, will be intentionally crash-landed on the Moon because their low orbit and fuel levels inhibit them from continuing their missions, which mapped the lunar gravity field with more precision than any other object in the solar system, according to space.com. Data from the GRAIL probes also allowed scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail.

"The two craft have generated the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body, which will help NASA understand more about how Earth and other rocky planets in the Solar System formed and evolved," reported the Register.

The first results from GRAIL's primary mission were released by scientists in early December and provide vivid detail of the moon's surface. Gravity mapping displayed "lava-filled dike features buried beneath the lunar soil, evidence the moon expanded in size in its early history," said Space.com.

"There is no record whatsoever of these features at the moon's surface," Zuber said. "If any record existed, it would have been wiped out by these early impacts. These dikes actually provide evidence for early expansion of the moon just after it formed."

"It is going to be difficult to say goodbye," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber of MIT. "Our little robotic twins have been exemplary members of the GRAIL family, and planetary science has advanced in a major way because of their contributions."