The Gravity Fields of the Saturnian Satellites

Physics

Scientific paper

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[1221] Geodesy And Gravity / Lunar And Planetary Geodesy And Gravity, [1240] Geodesy And Gravity / Satellite Geodesy: Results, [6280] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

In its tour of the Saturnian system, begun on July 1st, 2004, the Cassini spacecraft had many close flybys of Saturn's main satellites. However, due to impossibility to carry out simultaneously remote sensing observations and microwave tracking from ground, only a small fraction of those flybys could be exploited for gravity measurements. So far, the quadrupole field has been mapped only for Titan, Rhea and Enceladus, while for Hyperion and Iapetus the mass was the only accessible parameter. For Titan and Enceladus, the only satellites targeted more than once for gravity observations, also a rough geoid to degree and order 3 has been determined. Satellite gravity investigations rely upon accurate measurements of the spacecraft range rate, enabled by coherent, two-way radio links at X and Ka band (8.4 and 32.5 GHz). The use of hydrogen masers frequency standards at the ground station and the consid-erable suppression of plasma noise at X and Ka band frequen-cies provide range rate accuracies of 10-30 micron/s at integra-tion times of 60 s. Thanks to the higher frequency of the radio link, these measurement accuracies are in the average a factor of 10 better than those attained by Galileo in its tour of the Jovian system. However, in order to attain a reliable determination of the low degree field, good measurements must be combined with appropriate flyby geometries and adequate sampling, a condition that necessarily requires multiple flybys. We review the main results obtained so far by Cassini for Titan, Rhea and Enceladus, and discuss the methods of analysis used by the Radio Science Team.

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