Lunar Geophysics, Geodesy, and Dynamics

Experience with the dynamics and data analyses for Earth and Moon reveals both similarities and differences. Analysis of Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data provides information on the lunar orbit, rotation, solid-body tides, and retroreflector locations. Lunar rotational variations have strong sensitivity to moments of inertia and gravity field while weaker variations, including tidal variations, give sensitivity to the interior structure, physical properties, and energy dissipation. A fluid core of about 20% of the Moon's radius is indicated by the dissipation data. The seconddegree Love numbers are detected, most sensitively k2. Lunar tidal dissipation is strong and its Q has a weak dependence on tidal frequency. Dissipation-caused acceleration in orbital longitude is dominated by tides on Earth with the Moon only contributing about 1%, but lunar tides cause a significant eccentricity rate. The lunar motion is sensitive to orbit and mass parameters. The very low noise of the lunar orbit and rotation also allows sensitive tests of the theory of relativity. Moon-centered coordinates of four retroreflectors are determined. Extending the data span and improving range accuracy will yield improved and new scientific results. Introduction – the Earth and Moon This paper gives an overview of lunar geophysics, geodesy, and dynamics. There is a three decade span of laser ranges to the Moon. The Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) and Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) techniques are analogous and there has been parallel evolution of equipment and range accuracy and parallel efforts in model development and data analysis. It is natural to compare and contrast the SLR and LLR modeling and data analysis experiences for the Earth and the Moon. The requirement for accurate Earth rotation and orientation, solid-body tides, and station motion is common to SLR, LLR, GPS, and VLBI analyses. For SLR and LLR there are parallel concerns about orbital dynamics and the influencing forces. For both the Earth and Moon there is a need for accurate rotational dynamics and there are concerns about accurate body-centered site positions including tidal variations. But there are differences in the details and some of these differences are major. Consider some differences between the Earth and Moon. The Moon has no plate motion. There are moonquakes, but the largest (magnitude ~5) are much smaller than the largest earthquakes (Goins et al., 1981a). The Moon's rotation is synchronous and slow (27.3 days). The Moon's rotational speed at the equator is 1% of the Earth's speed and, unlike the Earth, the Moon's geometrical (Zuber et al., 1994; Smith et al., 1997) and gravitational figures (Dickey et al., 1994; Lemoine et al., 1997; Konopliv et al., 1998, 2001) are not near rotational equilibrium. The Moon lacks an atmosphere and oceans. Consequently, the rotation is quiet, there is no tidal loading, and there is no analog to geocenter motion. Because of the large lunar mass, nongravitational accelerations on the orbital motion are much smaller than artificial Earth satellites experience. Owing to the tectonic stability and quiet orbital and rotational dynamics, the full three decade span of LLR data can be fit with a single unbroken orbit. Ranges from recent years have a post-fit rms residual of 17 mm. Less is known about the Moon's interior structure than the Earth's. There is scant information about the structure below the deepest moonquakes at ~1100 km depth. It is only recently that moment of inertia (Konopliv et al., 1998) and magnetic induction evidence (Hood et al., 1999) for a lunar core have firmed up and that LLR analyses have indicated that the lunar core is liquid (Williams et al., 2001). It is still unknown whether there is a solid inner core within the liquid. Such unknowns complicate the data analysis, but they are opportunities for scientific discovery. Science from the Lunar Orbit The orbits of familiar artificial Earth satellites can be visualized as precessing, inclined ellipses perturbed most strongly by the Earth's J2 and less strongly by other irregularities in the gravity field as well as external bodies such as the Moon and Sun. For the lunar orbit (Table 1) the Sun is a very strong perturber and the nonspherical gravity fields of the Earth and Moon are weaker influences. For data analysis numerical integration of the lunar and planetary orbits is used, but series representations of the lunar orbit variations aid understanding. Table 2 presents the largest few periodic terms in lunar radial distance for several classes of gravitational interactions: solar and planetary interactions and gravitational harmonics (Chapront-Touzé and Chapront, 1988; 1991; Chapront-Touzé, 1983; C22 this paper), relativity excluding constant changes in scale (Lestrade and Chapront-Touzé, 1982; Nordtvedt, 1995; this paper), and solar radiation pressure (Vokrouhlicky, 1997). Despite the great size of the solar and planetary perturbations, they are accurately computed with numerical integration and the ranges are accurately fit to the centimeter accuracy of the LLR data. For example, modern data analyses can determine isolated (in period) orbit terms with a few millimeters accuracy so the large solar perturbation terms correspond to nine digits of accuracy for the mass ratio of Sun/(Earth+Moon). Note that the largest nongravitational perturbation of the radial component is 4 mm due to solar radiation pressure (Vokrouhlicky, 1997). Table 3 shows contributions to precession rates from several types of interactions (Chapront-Touzé and Chapront, 1983). Note that nine digits of accuracy for the solar interaction corresponds to <1 mas/yr in precession rates so that even small effects such as lunar gravity and relativity are important. The precession times are 6.0 yr for argument of perigee, 8.85 yr for longitude of perigee, and 18.6 yr for node. The large distance causes the lunar orbit to be virtually unaffected by atmospheric drag and other unpredictable, variable geophysical effects. Table 1. Lunar orbit. Mean distance 385,000.5 km a from mean 1/r 384,399.0 km e 0.0549 i to ecliptic plane 5.145 ̊ Sidereal period 27.322 d Table 2. Largest periodic terms in series for lunar radial variations for different classes of interactions. Interaction Type Amplitudes Ellipticity 20905 km Solar perturbations 3699 & 2956 km Jupiter perturbation 1.06 km Venus perturbations 0.73, 0.68 & 0.60 km Earth J2 0.46 & 0.45 km Moon J2 & C22 0.2 m Earth C22 0.5 mm Lorentz contraction 0.95 m Solar potential 6 cm Time transformation 5 & 5 cm Other relativity 5 cm Solar radiation pressure 4 mm Table 3. Contributions to orbital precession rates for mean longitude of perigee and node due to various interactions (Chapront-Touzé and Chapront, 1983). Interaction Type dπ/dt dΩ/dt