Gravity Field of the Moon from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission
- Creators
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Zuber, Maria T.
- Smith, David E.
- Watkins, Michael M.
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Asmar, Sami W.
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Konopliv, Alexander S.
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Lemoine, Frank G.
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Melosh, H. Jay
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Neumann, Gregory A.
- Phillips, Roger J.
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Solomon, Sean C.
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Wieczorek, Mark A.
- Williams, James G.
- Goossens, Sander J.
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Kruizinga, Gerhard
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Mazarico, Erwan
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Park, Ryan S.
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Yuan, Dah-Ning
Abstract
Spacecraft-to-spacecraft tracking observations from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) have been used to construct a gravitational field of the Moon to spherical harmonic degree and order 420. The GRAIL field reveals features not previously resolved, including tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks, and numerous simple craters. From degrees 80 through 300, over 98% of the gravitational signature is associated with topography, a result that reflects the preservation of crater relief in highly fractured crust. The remaining 2% represents fine details of subsurface structure not previously resolved. GRAIL elucidates the role of impact bombardment in homogenizing the distribution of shallow density anomalies on terrestrial planetary bodies.
Additional Information
The GRAIL mission is supported by NASA's Discovery Program and is performed under contract to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. We are grateful to the GRAIL spacecraft, instrument, and operations teams for outstanding support. We thank J. Andrews-Hanna, J. Head, W. Kiefer, P. McGovern, F. Nimmo, J. Soderblom, and M. Sori for helpful comments on the manuscript. The data used in this study have been submitted to the Geosciences Node of the NASA Planetary Data System.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 119701
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230307-22082000.24
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2023-03-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-03-07Created from EPrint's last_modified field