Ten Years of Mercury Ranging: The Story Thus Far

Details Ten Years of Mercury Ranging: The Story Thus Far Ten Years of Mercury Ranging: The Story Thus Far

Sep 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998dda....30.0304s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #30, #03.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1141

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Goldstone radar observations of Mercury now cover a period from late 1986 to mid-1997, a period during which we have not varied the system of data acquisition, the data resolution, or the processing procedures. Recently we have re-processed all these observations with respect to an intermediate updated ephemeris (known as DE-405) since assessing data quality was becoming difficult using older Mercury ephemerides. A number of procedural errors were uncovered via DE-405, and corrected by returning to the raw data and experiment logs. We are now attempting to create a suite of "closure points" which contain high precision orbital information free from topographic "noise". This data set will be used to create a new Mercury ephemeris, and, in combination with the extensive inner planet data sets, to set new limits on dG/dt/G, J2-sun, and various PPN parameters in metric gravitational theories. This data set now contains more than 100 observations for which Mercury topographic profiles are available. The longest profiles span more than 20 degrees along the apparent "Doppler" equator. All longitudes are currently included, though the corresponding latitudes range from -9 to +9 degrees. We will present a selection of a number of the more interesting profiles and attempt correlate topography with established geological features. Associated with the topography, we also obtain estimates of the back- scattering properties along the profile. Such measurements mostly represent broad regional variations of the surface roughness and should not be viewed as being associated with specific "pixels" at the sub-earth point.

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