A Proposed Lunar Orbiting Gravity Gradiometer Experiment

Details A Proposed Lunar Orbiting Gravity Gradiometer Experiment A Proposed Lunar Orbiting Gravity Gradiometer Experiment

Apr 1972

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1972moon....4..103d&link_type=abstract

The Moon, Volume 4, Issue 1-2, pp. 103-112

Physics

1

Scientific paper

Analysis of the gravity gradiometer developed by R. L. Forward and C. C. Bell at the Hughes Research Laboratories suggest than an accuracy, in the range 0.1 to 0.5 EU can be expected in a lunar orbiter application. This accuracy will allow gradient anomalies associated with mascons to be mapped with 1% accuracy and should reveal a great deal of new information about the lunar gravity field. The proposed experiment calls for putting such a gradiometer into a closely circular polar orbit at an average height of about 30 km above the lunar surface. This orbit allows the entire lunar surface to be covered in fourteen days, the gradiometer to be checked twice per revolution and results in successive passes above the lunar surface being spaced at about the resolution limit of about 30 km set both by the satellite altitude and instrumental integration time. Doppler tracking will be employed and the spacecraft will carry an electromagnetic altimeter. Gradient and altitude data from the far side of the Moon can be stored for replay when communication is re-established.

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