You are currently viewing the abstract.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
Register for free to read this article
As a service to the community, this article is available for free. Existing users log in.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Abstract
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.
