Global Topography and Gravity of the Moon Revealed by KAGUYA Mission

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

The Japanese lunar explorer KAGUYA (SELENE) was launched successfully on September 14th, 2007. KAGUYA has two small spin-stabilized subsatellites, Rstar (OKINA) and Vstar (OUNA) for gravity measurement. We can track the three satellites by new methods: 4-way Doppler tracking between the main satellite and Rstar for the far-side gravity and multi-frequency differential VLBI tracking between Rstar and Vstar. The global lunar gravity field with unprecedented accuracy can be obtained. Through more than 6 months, precise gravity field including most of farside was obtained. The farside gravity field shows significant improvement from the previous model. Many circular features corresponding to impact structures are clearly identified. Some of the circular gravity anomalies in the free-air gravity apparently disappear in Bouguer anomaly map; the surface topography is a dominant source of free-air gravity anomalies and large impact structures are supported by lithosphere, which would lead to the difference of thermal history between nearside and farside. A possible cryptomare candidate (a circular gravity anomaly without topographic signature) was also found.
KAGUYA has a laser altimeter (LALT). The first precise global topography data with range accuracy 5m have been produced by LALT. In the polar regions where CLEMENTINE did not cover, topographic features in the shadowed area are newly discovered. Solar illumination condition was calculated: the region whose solar illumination rate is higher than 90% is very limited. Lunar mean radius is 1737.15±0.01 km and the COM-COF offset is 1.94 km. The amplitude of the power spectrum of topography spherical harmonics is larger than that of the previous model at L>30.
From the gravity and topography data, we obtain the distribution of the crustal thickness on the Moon. We also estimate the correlation between gravity and topography and localized admittance values. Gravity and topography observation of KAGUYA will continue until early 2009.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Global Topography and Gravity of the Moon Revealed by KAGUYA Mission does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Global Topography and Gravity of the Moon Revealed by KAGUYA Mission, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Global Topography and Gravity of the Moon Revealed by KAGUYA Mission will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1436516

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.