Gravity Field and Internal Structure of Mercury from MESSENGER

Details Gravity Field and Internal Structure of Mercury from MESSENGER Gravity Field and Internal Structure of Mercury from MESSENGER

Apr 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012sci...336..214s&link_type=abstract

Science, Volume 336, Issue 6078, pp. 214- (2012).

Physics

Scientific paper

Radio tracking of the MESSENGER spacecraft has provided a model of Mercury’s gravity field. In the northern hemisphere, several large gravity anomalies, including candidate mass concentrations (mascons), exceed 100 milli-Galileos (mgal). Mercury’s northern hemisphere crust is thicker at low latitudes and thinner in the polar region and shows evidence for thinning beneath some impact basins. The low-degree gravity field, combined with planetary spin parameters, yields the moment of inertia C/MR2 = 0.353 ± 0.017, where M and R are Mercury’s mass and radius, and a ratio of the moment of inertia of Mercury’s solid outer shell to that of the planet of Cm/C = 0.452 ± 0.035. A model for Mercury’s radial density distribution consistent with these results includes a solid silicate crust and mantle overlying a solid iron-sulfide layer and an iron-rich liquid outer core and perhaps a solid inner core.

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