Issue |
A&A
Volume 681, January 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A5 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Celestial mechanics and astrometry | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347643 | |
Published online | 20 December 2023 |
Advantages of combining Lunar Laser Ranging and Differential Lunar Laser Ranging
Leibniz University Hannover, Institute of Geodesy (IfE),
Schneiderberg 50,
30167
Hannover,
Germany
e-mail: zhang@ife.uni-hannover.de
Received:
2
August
2023
Accepted:
10
October
2023
Context. Differential Lunar Laser Ranging (DLLR), which is planned to be conducted at Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the future, is a novel technique for tracking to the Moon. This technique has the potential to determine the orientation, rotation, and interior of the Moon much more accurately if the expected high accuracy of about 30 μm can be achieved.
Aims. We focus on the benefit for the related parameters when only DLLR data with a short time span are available in the beginning.
Methods. A short DLLR time series is not enough to provide an accurate lunar orbit, which has a negative effect on parameter estimation. Fortunately, Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) has been collecting data for a very long time span, which can be used to compensate this DLLR disadvantage. The combination of LLR data (over more than 50 yr) and simulated DLLR data over a relatively short time span (e.g., 5 or 10 yr) is used in different cases which include changing reflector baselines and extending data time span, along with adding more stations and “new” reflectors.
Results. The results show that the estimated accuracies of the parameters related to the lunar orientation, rotation, and interior can be improved by about 5–100 times by simply adding 5-yr DLLR data in the combination. With LLR, further enhancing the parameter determination can be achieved by choosing appropriate reflector baselines. By investigating different scenarios of reflector baselines based on the present five reflectors on the Moon, we find that two crossing baselines with larger lengths offer the greatest advantage. A longer data time span is more helpful, rather than having more stations involved in the measurement within a shorter time span, assuming the amount of data in these two cases is the same. Furthermore, we evaluated the preferred position of an assumed new reflector.
Key words: Moon / astrometry / celestial mechanics / methods: data analysis
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.