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Principal Data Products: Ensemble of L-maps from SPC, Spacecraft state, Asteroid pole and rotation. Secondary Products: Global topography model, inertia tensor, gravity. Composite high resolution topography. Three dimensional image maps.
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When Mercury's radius is expanded in Legendre functions to the second degree and order, the systematic error in radar ranging data is reduced substantially. Previously, data spanning an observing interval from 1966 to 1990 were used to infer an equatorial ellipticity (a - b)/a = (540 +/- 54) X 10(exp -6) and a center-of-figure minus center-of-mass offset of (640 +/- 78) m. The magnitude of this equatorial center of figure offset implies an excess crustal thickness of 12 km or less, comparable to the Moon's excess. By comparing the equatorial ellipticity with the Mariner 10 gravity field, and assuming Airy isostatic compensation, bounds on crustal thickness can be derived. Mercury's crustal thickness is in the range from 100 to 300 km. The Mercury radar ranging observing interval has been extended from 1966 to the present. In addition, improvements in data reduction techniques have resulted in a set of Mercury ranging data less affected by systematic error, in particular the biases introduced by local topographic variations. We use this new set of reduced ranging data to improve Mercury's global topography and center-of-figure minus center-of-mass offset. New results on crustal thickness are derived, and prospects for further improvement with Mercury Orbiter data are discussed.
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An analysis of newly available global harmonic models for topography and geoid on Venus was conducted. It was found that the power spectral density for Venus topography has a power law dependence on wave-number characteristic of Brown Noise, similar to what is found for the Earth. However, the Venus topography spectrum presents a rollover at lower degree (l = 3) than is observed for the Earth spectrum and has smaller amplitudes than that of the Earth's. The Venus geoid also obeys a power law relationship, at least for small values of l, but with a smaller slope and more power (for l greater than 3) than the Earth geoid.
Elevations measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter have yielded a high-accuracy global map of the topography of Mars. Dominant features include the low northern hemisphere, the Tharsis province, and the Hellas impact basin. The northern hemisphere depression is primarily a long-wavelength effect that has been shaped by an internal mechanism. The topography of Tharsis consists of two broad rises. Material excavated from Hellas contributes to the high elevation of the southern hemisphere and to the scarp along the hemispheric boundary. The present topography has three major drainage centers, with the northern lowlands being the largest. The two polar cap volumes yield an upper limit of the present surface water inventory of 3.2 to 4.7 million cubic kilometers.
After acquiring topographic measurements of the northern hemisphere of Mars last Spring and Summer the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft will begin to observe the rest of Mars from its planned mapping orbit in early March of this this year. After successfully completing the aerobraking phase of the mission in February, the spacecraft will be finally placed into the near circular, 400 km polar, mapping orbit for almost continuous observation of the planet for one Mars year. Of particular interest in the early phases will be the structure of the southern ice cap, the cratered southern highlands and the topography in the region of the landing sites of the Mars 98 and the Mars 01 missions.
An accurate description of the surface elevation of the Earth is of fundamental importance to many branches of Earth science. A number of working groups have considered the characteristics of the available digital topographic data base and found that there are significant deficiencies in available topographic data that severly limit existing and potential new scientific applications.
Previous methods used for two-dimensional radar mapping of the moon are contrasted with new techniques that add altitude information to the radar map. Delay-Doppler stereoscopy and delay-Doppler interferometry are shown to provide surface-height variations with higher accuracy and better global fidelity than has been possible previously. Sample results are presented for altitude contours on the moon as obtained with the Haystack and Westford radar systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An appendix describes the mathematical principles of delay-Doppler interferometry in determining the position of an arbitrary reflecting region of the lunar surface from measurements of the time delay, Doppler shift, and fringe phase of radar echoes from that region.
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This viewgraph document reviews the topography of the Itokawa asteroid. It summarizes some of the relevant information about the asteroid, and how using the imaging from Hayabusa and LIDAR data, a topographic image of Itokawa was derived.
A global topography is presently calculated for two multilayer Io models in which dissipation occurs in a viscous asthenosphere and a solid mantle: (1) a 'thermal swell' model, in which topography and heat flow are positively correlated, and (2) a 'differentiated lithosphere' model, in which topography and heat flow are negatively correlated. Both the polar topography and the hypsometric distribution of elevations in the differentiated lithosphere model are better matched with observations than the thermal swell model. The shift of the equatorial basin-swell pattern indicates a recent zonal rotation of about 25 deg for Io's lithosphere.
Global digital topography data of the land surface is of importance in a variety of geoscientific and application disciplines. Such a database, with a spatial resolution of 150 to 500 m and height accuracy of 5 m or better can be acquired from an orbiting platform using a synthetic aperture scanning radar altimeter. Near-global coverage can be achieved within 14 days from an orbiting platform in a polar or near-polar orbit.
In this analysis we invert global models of Mars' topography from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and gravity from Doppler tracking obtained during the mapping mission of Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). We analyze the distribution of Martian crust and discuss implications for Mars' thermal history.