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Science 13 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5916, pp. 897 - 900
DOI: 10.1126/science.1164146
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Reports

Lunar Global Shape and Polar Topography Derived from Kaguya-LALT Laser Altimetry

H. Araki,1* S. Tazawa,2 H. Noda,1 Y. Ishihara,2 S. Goossens,2 S. Sasaki,2 N. Kawano,2 I. Kamiya,3 H. Otake,4 J. Oberst,5 C. Shum6

A global lunar topographic map with a spatial resolution of finer than 0.5 degree has been derived using data from the laser altimeter (LALT) on board the Japanese lunar explorer Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE or Kaguya). In comparison with the previous Unified Lunar Control Network (ULCN 2005) model, the new map reveals unbiased lunar topography for scales finer than a few hundred kilometers. Spherical harmonic analysis of global topographic data for the Moon, Earth, Mars, and Venus suggests that isostatic compensation is the prevailing lithospheric support mechanism at large scales. However, simple rigid support is suggested to dominate for the Moon, Venus, and Mars for smaller scales, which may indicate a drier lithosphere than on Earth, especially for the Moon and Venus.

1 National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan.
2 National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 2-12 Hoshigaoka, Mizusawa, Oshu, Iwate 023-0861, Japan.
3 Geographical Survey Institute, 1 Kitasato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0811, Japan.
4 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 2-1-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8505, Japan.
5 German Aerospace Center (DLR), Rutherfordstraße 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
6 Ohio State University, School of Earth Sciences, 121 South Oval Mall, 275 Mendenhall Laboratory, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: arakih{at}miz.nao.ac.jp

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Farside Gravity Field of the Moon from Four-Way Doppler Measurements of SELENE (Kaguya).
N. Namiki, T. Iwata, K. Matsumoto, H. Hanada, H. Noda, S. Goossens, M. Ogawa, N. Kawano, K. Asari, S.-i. Tsuruta, et al. (2009)
Science 323, 900-905
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