The smoothness of orbital measures on noncompact symmetric spaces

Let $G/K$ be an irreducible symmetric space where $G$ is a non-compact, connected Lie group and $K$ is a compact, connected subgroup. We use decay properties of the spherical functions to show that the convolution product of any $r=r(G/K)$ continuous orbital measures has its density function in $$ and hence is an absolutely continuous measure with respect to Haar measure. The number $r$ is approximately the rank of $G/K$. For the special case of the orbital measures, $\nu_{a_{i}}$, supported on the double cosets $Ka_{i}K$ where $a_{i}$ belongs to the dense set of regular elements, we prove the sharp result that $\nu_{a_{1}}\ast \nu_{a_{2}}\in L^{2},$ except for the symmetric space of Cartan type $AI$ when the convolution of three orbital measures is needed (even though $\nu_{a_{1}}\ast \nu_{a_{2}}$ is absolutely continuous).