Mascons and the moon's orientation

Details Mascons and the moon's orientation Mascons and the moon's orientation

Apr 1975

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1975e%26psl..25..322m&link_type=abstract

Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 25, no. 3, Apr. 1975, p. 322-326.

Other

3

Lunar Gravitation, Lunar Rocks, Mascons, Moments Of Inertia, Basalt, Harmonic Analysis, Lunar Far Side, Lunar Maria, Lunar Surface, Orientation

Scientific paper

This letter reports the discovery of a relation between the moments of inertia of the mascons (taken about the moon's center) and the moon's moments of inertia. It is found that the principal axes of the mascons alone are nearly parallel to those of the moon. Possible explanations of this parallelism are discussed. If the mascons are associated with a layer of uncompensated basalt on the moon's nearside, then the parallelism can be adequately explained on the grounds that the mascons and basalts together determined the moon's orientation. On the other hand, the third-order harmonics of the moon's gravity field indicate that the excess mass controlling the moon's orientation is on the farside. It thus appears that the mascons have been emplaced in special sites whose position was controlled by the processes which produced the farside highlands.

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