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S. Asmar (Jet Propulsion Laboratory & UCLA), G. Schubert, F. Nimmo (University of California, Los Angeles)
Utilizing the gravity and topography data in the spectral domain to compute the admittance function can lead to estimates of the effective thickness of the part of the lithosphere that can support elastic stresses over long time scales. Data from the Lunar Prospector mission provide for a very high-resolution gravity field, especially for the near side of the Moon. Lunar topography from the Clementine lidar was augmented by radio occultations in the Polar Regions to provide a global field. In the Cartesian admittance approach, the gravity data for certain regions of interest, such as South Pole Aitken, are identified as rectangular sections and the data are derived from either the spherical harmonic expansion or the line-of-sight accelerations. The computations require assumptions about the properties of the moon and various signal processing techniques of windowing the data, to which the results are highly sensitive. Comparisons of these parameters will be presented along with applicable results. Geophysical interpretations will also be presented of the elastic thickness for selected regions of the moon.
This research has been conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under contract for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
References: McKenzie, D. (1994) Icarus, 112, 55–88 Konopliv, A. S., S. W. Asmar, E. Carranza, D. N. Yuan, and W. L. Sjogren, (2001) Icarus, 150, 1-18 Asmar, S., G. Schubert, W. Moore, A. Konopliv, D. Smith, & M. Zuber (2000) EOS Trans. AGU 81 (48), Fall Meet Suppl., Abstract G71A-04 Asmar, S and G. Schubert, In Heather D. J. (ed) New Views of the Moon, Europe: Future Lunar Exploration, Science Objectives, and Integration of Datasets. ESTEC RSSD, Noordwijk.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #4
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.