The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ...
Changes in mass distribution affect the gravitational figure and reorient a planetary body’s surface with respect to its rotational axis. The mass anomalies in the present-day lunar gravity field can reveal how the figure and pole position have evolved over the Moon’s history. By examining sequentia...
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Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m246g3-kl9g https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/26189 |
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ftdatacite:10.13016/m246g3-kl9g 2023-08-27T04:12:03+02:00 The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... Smith, David E. Viswanathan, Vishnu Mazarico, Erwan Goossens, Sander Head, James W. Neumann, Gregory A. Zuber, Maria T. 2022 https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m246g3-kl9g https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/26189 unknown IOP Public Domain Mark 1.0 This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ CreativeWork article 2022 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.13016/m246g3-kl9g 2023-08-07T14:24:23Z Changes in mass distribution affect the gravitational figure and reorient a planetary body’s surface with respect to its rotational axis. The mass anomalies in the present-day lunar gravity field can reveal how the figure and pole position have evolved over the Moon’s history. By examining sequentially each individual crater and basin, working backward in time order through the catalog of nearly 5200 craters and basins between 1200 and 20 km in diameter, we investigate their contribution to the lunar gravitational figure and reconstruct the evolution of the pole position by extracting their gravitational signatures from the present-day Moon. We find that craters and basins in this diameter range, which excludes South Pole–Aitken, have contributed to nearly 25% of the present-day power from the Moon’s degree-2 gravitational figure and resulted in a total displacement of the Moon’s pole by ∼10° along the Earth–Moon tidal axis over the past ∼4.25 billion years. This also implies that the geographical location ... Article in Journal/Newspaper South pole DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Aitken ENVELOPE(-44.516,-44.516,-60.733,-60.733) South Pole |
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Open Polar |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
description |
Changes in mass distribution affect the gravitational figure and reorient a planetary body’s surface with respect to its rotational axis. The mass anomalies in the present-day lunar gravity field can reveal how the figure and pole position have evolved over the Moon’s history. By examining sequentially each individual crater and basin, working backward in time order through the catalog of nearly 5200 craters and basins between 1200 and 20 km in diameter, we investigate their contribution to the lunar gravitational figure and reconstruct the evolution of the pole position by extracting their gravitational signatures from the present-day Moon. We find that craters and basins in this diameter range, which excludes South Pole–Aitken, have contributed to nearly 25% of the present-day power from the Moon’s degree-2 gravitational figure and resulted in a total displacement of the Moon’s pole by ∼10° along the Earth–Moon tidal axis over the past ∼4.25 billion years. This also implies that the geographical location ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Smith, David E. Viswanathan, Vishnu Mazarico, Erwan Goossens, Sander Head, James W. Neumann, Gregory A. Zuber, Maria T. |
spellingShingle |
Smith, David E. Viswanathan, Vishnu Mazarico, Erwan Goossens, Sander Head, James W. Neumann, Gregory A. Zuber, Maria T. The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
author_facet |
Smith, David E. Viswanathan, Vishnu Mazarico, Erwan Goossens, Sander Head, James W. Neumann, Gregory A. Zuber, Maria T. |
author_sort |
Smith, David E. |
title |
The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
title_short |
The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
title_full |
The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
title_fullStr |
The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Contribution of Small Impact Craters to Lunar Polar Wander ... |
title_sort |
contribution of small impact craters to lunar polar wander ... |
publisher |
IOP |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/m246g3-kl9g https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/26189 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-44.516,-44.516,-60.733,-60.733) |
geographic |
Aitken South Pole |
geographic_facet |
Aitken South Pole |
genre |
South pole |
genre_facet |
South pole |
op_rights |
Public Domain Mark 1.0 This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.13016/m246g3-kl9g |
_version_ |
1775355827679395840 |