Related papers: Lunar Laser Ranging Science
Various experiments have been conducted to search for the radio emission from ultra-high-energy particles interacting in the lunar regolith. Although they have not yielded any detections, they have been successful in establishing upper…
Reliable energy delivery is a critical requirement for long-term lunar missions, particularly in regions with limited solar access, such as polar craters and during extended lunar nights. Optical Power Beaming (OPB) using high-power lasers…
The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission's Curiosity rover has been measuring galactic cosmic rays (GCR) as well as solar energetic particles (SEP) on the surface of Mars for more…
High-precision corner-cube retroreflectors (CCRs) are critical for advanced lunar laser ranging (LLR) because they enable sub-millimeter-scale measurements of the Earth-Moon distance -- a level of precision essential for rigorous tests of…
With humans returning to the Moon under the Artemis program, understanding and mitigating effects from Plume Surface Interactions (PSI) will be essential for the protection of personnel and equipment on the Moon. To help characterize the…
We present new constraints on Lorentz symmetry (LS) violations with lunar laser ranging (LLR). Those constraints are derived in the standard-model extension (SME) framework aiming at parameterizing any LS deviations in all sectors of…
In this paper we examine the possibility of testing the equivalence principle, in its weak form, by analyzing the orbital motion of a pair of artificial satellites of different composition moving along orbits of identical shape and size in…
In the search for the nature of dark energy most cosmological probes measure simple functions of the expansion rate. While powerful, these all involve roughly the same dependence on the dark energy equation of state parameters, with…
A new model has been developed to estimate the dielectric constant of the lunar surface using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. Continuous investigation on the dielectric constant of the lunar surface is a high priority task due to…
The Laser Interferometer Lunar Antenna (LILA), a concept for measuring sub-Hz gravitational waves on the Moon, would use laser strainmeters to obtain extremely sensitive strain measurements from 1 mHz to 1 Hz. With proposed strain…
An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and significant geological activity. We demonstrate that if Venus'…
The Laser Ranging Interferometer (LRI) instrument on the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-On mission has provided the first laser interferometric range measurements between remote spacecraft, separated by approximately…
General relativity (GR) is a highly successful theory that describes gravity as a geometric phenomenon. The gravitational redshift, a classic test of GR, can potentially be violated in alternative gravity theories, and experimental tests on…
In this paper we preliminarily explore the possibility of designing a dedicated satellite-based mission to measure the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of Mars. The focus is on the…
We present data from the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO) covering the 15-year span from April 2006 through the end of 2020. APOLLO measures the earth-moon separation by recording the round-trip travel time of…
We present a unified post-Newtonian framework for relativistic timing and coordinate transformations covering six time scales (TCB, TCG, TT, TDB, TCL, TL) and three reference systems (BCRS, GCRS, LCRS). Extending the IAU conventions, we…
This work investigates the use of stellar occultation measurements to enhance the orbit determination performance of the Lunar Meteoroid Impact Observer (LUMIO) mission, operating from a quasi-Halo orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 point.…
The measured neutron flux from the Moons south polar region shows evidence of locally enhanced hydrogen concentrations, likely in the form of water ice, within most permanently shadowed regions (PSR), poleward of 77 deg S latitude. Results…
The Moon migrated to $r_{\leftmoon}\simeq3.8\times10^{10}$ cm over a characteristic time $r/v=10^{10}$ Gyr by tidal interaction with the Earth's oceans at a present velocity of $v=3.8$ cm yr$^{-1}$. We derive scaling of global dissipation…
Lunar dust -- the sub-millimeter fraction of the regolith -- controls the optical, thermophysical, electrical, mechanical, and environmental behavior of the Moon's surface. These properties set the performance envelopes of remote-sensing…