NASA has decided to split the moon twin GRAIL probes

The US space agency NASA has announced that he has finished his mission probes twin GRAIL will be destroyed. December 17 this year, they crash into the lunar surface at a speed of the order of 1, 7 kilometers per second.
 
According to experts, these devices will not be able to continue to collect scientific data due to lack of fuel and too low orbit (orbit in recent weeks, these devices have reduced to a height of 10 kilometers).

When selecting the crash site probes (vicinity of the crater Goldschmidt, the north pole of the Moon) experts were guided by the fact that there has so-called objects of "cultural heritage».

Fall devices for "-trajectory" of the trajectory at an angle of 1, 5 degrees, which will allow them to leave the planet's surface a small "scratch." If they fall vertically to the crater diameter was 4.3 m.

Recall that the mission «Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory» (GRAIL) began in September last year, and in March probes "Flow" and "Ebb" began measuring lunar gravity at an altitude of 55 kilometers. The cost of the mission amounted to 496 million dollars.