Crazy Engineering: GRACE-FO

Mike Meacham: Here on Earth we all know about gravity. But what you might not realize is that, depending where you are on the planet, the strength of gravity is different. For example, up here on a mountain with all this mass underneath, gravity is stronger.

Water also has mass. And the Earth has a whole lot of water. It's moving around. It's changing phases. If you can track the change in gravity, you can track the change in mass. And that means you're understanding the movement of water.

NASA's about to send the GRACE Follow-On mission which will continue to do just that. Let's learn about it on this episode of Crazy Engineering.

OK, everybody. We're here with Neil, he's one of the key engineers on the GRACE Follow-On mission. Neil, thank you so much for joiining us and answering our questions.

Why do we call it "GRACE Follow-On"?

Neil Dahya: So, GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. And we're using gravity to track water motion around the planet. And the "Follow-On" because we've done this before--and we're doing it again with two new satellites.

The original GRACE mission was launched in 2002. They lasted for 15 years and provided amazing science for the scientists.