Mercury's Gravity Field After The First Months Of MESSENGER'S Orbital Phase

Details Mercury's Gravity Field After The First Months Of MESSENGER'S Orbital Phase Mercury's Gravity Field After The First Months Of MESSENGER'S Orbital Phase

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p43e..02s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P43E-02

Physics

[5417] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Gravitational Fields, [5430] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Interiors, [6230] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Martian Satellites

Scientific paper

After MESSENGER's three flybys of and several months in orbit about the innermost planet, a new global gravity model for Mercury has been developed from X-band tracking of the spacecraft. This model, complete to degree and order 20, has a surface resolution in the northern hemisphere of approximately 300 km. The effective resolution is 500 to 1000 km in the southern hemisphere as a result of the highly eccentric orbit of the spacecraft. In this model the dynamic range of the geoid and gravity anomalies is approximately 300 m, and 200 mGal, respectively. The extremes in both the geoid and gravity anomalies are in the northern hemisphere or near the equator, where the resolution of the field is best. This result does not preclude there being anomalies of similar magnitude in the southern hemisphere where the true resolution of our model is effectively less than degree and order 20. All the coefficients at low degree and order are stable from solution to solution as the maximum degree and order of the harmonic expansion and the small-external force parameters are adjusted. We take this stability as an indication that the degree-2 coefficients provide appropriate constraints for core and mantle structure. The value of the product of the mass and gravitational constant is very similar to that obtained from the MESSENGER flybys in 2008.

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