The near side: Regional lunar gravity field determination

Physics

Scientific paper

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Lunar, Gravity Field

Scientific paper

In the past ten years the Moon has come fully back into focus, resulting in missions such as Clementine and Lunar Prospector. Data from these missions resulted in a boost in lunar gravity field modelling. Until this date, the lunar gravity field has mainly been expressed in a global representation, despite the lack of data over the far side of the Moon, which is the result of the spin-orbit resonance the Earth and Moon are in. To extract the wealth of information about the near side present in tracking data of the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, the global formulation is not efficient and regional representations become of interest. They can be used to derive accurate and high-resolution local gravity anomaly maps of the near side, which can help to understand the structure and evolution of the Moon, and consequently the Earth- Moon system, as they provide the boundary conditions for internal processes and structure. This dissertation presents a method for the regional recovery of gravity from satellite tracking data, in order to improve the resolution and accuracy of current lunar gravity field models and in order to exploit the high-resolution gravity information present in the data, without significant interference from the unknown far side. The recovery method has been applied to Lunar Prospector tracking data to create high-resolution solutions for parts on the near side of the Moon. The use of such a recovery method is not limited to one celestial body only and will be very valuable in planetary geodesy. Current and future dedicated gravity satellite missions should provide ample opportunity to apply a method as presented in this dissertation.

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