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For the lunar gravity field, it is conventional to use an equatorial radius of R = 1738.0 km. The gravity potential is written with a series of spherical harmonic functions P nm. The gravitational potential V at an external point is conventionally expressed as positive in astronomy and geophysics, but negative in physics. Then, with the former ...
MoonKAM shot. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's Discovery Program which used high-quality gravitational field mapping of the Moon to determine its interior structure.
English: This image shows the variations in the lunar gravity field as measured by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) during the primary mapping mission from March to May 2012. Very precise microwave measurements between two spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, were used to map gravity with high precision and high spatial ...
A first gravitational period for lunar theory started with the work of Newton. He was the first to define the problem of the perturbed motion of the Moon in recognisably modern terms. His groundbreaking work is shown for example in the Principia [22] in all versions including the first edition published in 1687.
[37] [38] Two lunar surface experiments to study the theorised responses of a planetary body to gravitational waves were put forward in response to a call for proposals from ESA in 2020, with the Italian Gran Sasso Science Institute proposing the Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna [39] and the French Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory ...
The Lunar Traverse Gravimeter was a lunar science experiment, deployed by astronauts on the lunar surface in 1972 as part of Apollo 17.The goal of the experiment was to use relative gravity measurements to infer potential attributes about the geological substrata near the Apollo 17 landing site.
However, a spherical harmonics series expansion captures the actual field with increasing fidelity. If Earth's shape were perfectly known together with the exact mass density ρ = ρ(x, y, z), it could be integrated numerically (when combined with a reciprocal distance kernel) to find an accurate model for Earth's gravitational field. However ...
The Luna 10 orbiter was the first artificial object to orbit the Moon, and it returned tracking data indicating that the lunar gravitational field caused larger than expected perturbations, presumably due to "roughness" of the lunar gravitational field. [6] The Lunar mascons were discovered by Paul M. Muller and William L. Sjogren of the NASA ...