High‐resolution lunar gravity fields from the GRAIL Primary and Extended Missions. Issue 5 (13th March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Konopliv, Alex S.; Park, Ryan S.; Yuan, Dah‐Ning; Asmar, Sami W.; Watkins, Michael M.; Williams, James G.; Fahnestock, Eugene; Kruizinga, Gerhard; Paik, Meegyeong; Strekalov, Dmitry; Harvey, Nate; Smith, David E.; Zuber, Maria T.
• Is Part Of: Geophysical research letters. Volume 41:Issue 5(2014:Mar.)
• Page Start: 1452
• Page End: 1458
• Publication Date: 2014-03-13
• Subjects: Geophysics -- Periodicals; Planets -- Periodicals; Lunar geology -- Periodicals; 550
• DOI: 10.1002/2013GL059066
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0094-8276

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>The resolution and accuracy of the lunar spherical harmonic gravity field have been dramatically improved as a result of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. From the Primary Mission, previous harmonic gravity fields resulted in an average <italic>n</italic> = 420 surface resolution and a Bouguer spectrum to <italic>n</italic> = 330. The GRAIL Extended Mission improves the resolution due to a lower average 23 km altitude orbit. As a result, new harmonic degree 900 gravity fields (GL0900C and GL0900D) show nearly a factor of 2 improvement with an average surface resolution <italic>n</italic> = 870 and the Bouguer spectrum extended to <italic>n</italic> = 550. Since the minimum spacecraft altitude varies spatially between 3 km and 23 km, the surface resolution is variable from near <italic>n</italic> = 680 for the central farside to near <italic>n</italic> = 900 for the polar regions. These gravity fields with 0.8 million parameters are by far the highest‐degree fields of any planet ever estimated with a fully dynamic least squares technique using spacecraft tracking data.</p> </abstract>