Lunar global shape and polar topography derived from Kaguya-LALT laser altimetry

Science

Volumn 323, Issue 5916, 2009, Pages 897-900

  Araki, H ^a   Tazawa, S ^a   Noda, H ^a   Ishihara, Y ^a   Goossens, S ^a   Sasaki, S ^a   Kawano, N ^a   Kamiya, I ^b   Otake, H ^c   Oberst, J ^d   Shum, C ^e  

^a NATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY OF JAPAN   (Japan)

^b GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY INSTITUTE   (Japan)

^c JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY   (Japan)

^d GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER DLR   (Germany)

^e OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALTIMETRY; HARMONIC ANALYSIS; LASER METHOD; LITHOSPHERE; SPATIAL RESOLUTION;

AMPLITUDE MODULATION; ARTICLE; ASTRONOMY; LAER ALTIMETER; LARGE SCALE PRODUCTION; LASER; LITHOSPHERE; MOLECULAR MODEL; MOON; PRIORITY JOURNAL; TOPOGRAPHY;

SELENE;

EID: 60149091350     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: 10959203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1164146     Document Type: Article

References (22)

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9. One remaining concern is about systematic errors in measurements of pulse arrivals due to distortion of the return pulse caused by the sloped and/or rough target terrain in combination with unknown albedo effects. This error (range shift) may result in underestimates of ranges by 12 m in the very worst case of 30° slope and 30% surface reflectance before the pulse spreading correction. For moderately flat surfaces, systematic range errors are expected to be 2.5 m (8).
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13. Orbits are determined by full-scale precision force and measurement modeling. For each data arc, estimated parameters include the state vector at epoch, a solar radiation pressure coefficient, empirical accelerations with a once per orbital revolution signature in the along-track and cross-track direction, and measurement biases to absorb systematic effects and mismodeling. Orbit precision has been evaluated by computing orbit overlap differences. Overlap analysis showed a radial consistency of 1 m in general, with outliers (that were excluded from topography data processing) up to 4 m.
14. The pointing error is considered to be <0.1° (175 m for 100-km altitude), based on the thermal and other deformation analysis of the main orbiter. Time-tag error is <1 msec (1.5 m along-track for 100-km altitude) through the correction that takes into account the propagation time from the main orbiter to each station and the processing delay on each tracking station. These values (175 m and 1.5 m) are incorporated into the final budget as 3 SD errors.
15. The laser power has decreased since the middle of April 2008 for yet unexplained reasons, disrupting our data analysis schedule.
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22. We would like to express our great appreciation for the contributions of all staff engineers of NEC Co. Ltd. and the entire staff of the Kaguya (SELENE) project at JAXA in their development and operational support of LALT. We would also express our special thanks to M. Wieczorek for SHTOOLS on his Web site (www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/~wieczor) used for the spherical harmonic analysis and F. Lemoine and his colleagues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for invaluable discussions on the orbit accuracy of the Kaguya main orbiter. Finally, we are grateful to the reviewers for their helpful review and comments and to editors for their careful checking of our manuscript. All of the science data obtained by the Kaguya mission will be made available to the public in a PDS-like format (not PDS itself) via the Internet and/or some other method on 1 November 2009. LALT data sets are summarized in table S1.