Lunar Gravimetry

Lunar Gravimetry: Revealing the Far-Side provides a thorough and detailed discussion of lunar gravity field research and applications, from the initial efforts of the pre-Apollo and Luna eras to the dedicated gravity mapping experiments of the third millennium.
Analysis of the spatial variations of the gravity field of the Moon is a key selenodetic element in the understanding of the physics of the Moon's interior. Remarkably, more than forty years after the initial steps in lunar exploration by spacecraft, the global gravity field still remains largely unknown, due to the limitations of standard observations techniques. As such, knowledge of the high-accuracy and high-resolution gravity field is one of the remaining unsolved issues in lunar science.

"Lunar Gravimetry: Revealing the Far-Side is a long-awaited monograph wrapping up the past decades of lunar gravimetric research. Despite a series of new lunar missions and extensive research on the subject, half of the lunar globe has remained unaccessed. The author illusively shows how this deficit impacts today's knowledge about the Moon, how to attack this problem in modern data analysis and how to ultimately solve it by dedicated inter-satellite tracking in future lunar exploration missions."
(Dr. Oliver Montenbruck, Section Space Flight Dynamics, German Space Operations Center)

Klappentext
Lunar Gravimetry: Revealing the Far-Side provides a thorough and detailed discussion of lunar gravity field research and applications, from the initial efforts of the pre-Apollo and Luna eras to the dedicated gravity mapping experiments of the third millennium.Analysis of the spatial variations of the gravity field of the Moon is a key selenodetic element in the understanding of the physics of the Moon's interior. Remarkably, more than forty years after the initial steps in lunar exploration by spacecraft, the global gravity field still remains largely unknown, due to the limitations of standard observations techniques. As such, knowledge of the high-accuracy and high-resolution gravity field is one of the remaining unsolved issues in lunar science.

Zusammenfassung
Lunar Gravimetry: Revealing the Far-Side provides a thorough and detailed discussion of lunar gravity field research and applications, from the initial efforts of the pre-Apollo and Luna eras to the dedicated gravity mapping experiments of the third millennium.
Analysis of the spatial variations of the gravity field of the Moon is a key selenodetic element in the understanding of the physics of the Moon's interior. Remarkably, more than forty years after the initial steps in lunar exploration by spacecraft, the global gravity field still remains largely unknown, due to the limitations of standard observations techniques. As such, knowledge of the high-accuracy and high-resolution gravity field is one of the remaining unsolved issues in lunar science.

Inhalt

1. Introduction. 2. Fundamentals of lunar gravity field recovery. 3. Assessment of modern lunar gravity field models through orbit analysis. 4. Ill-conditioning of the lunar gravimetric inverse problem. 5. Lunar gravity field modelling experiments with European data sets. 6. Towards a global data set. 7. Epilogue. A. Fundamentals of selenography. B. The generalised singular value decomposition (GSVD). C. Some useful coordinate transformations. D. The Euler- Lagrange equation and the range rate SST signal. Bibliography. Index.