3 ms·
Oh wow, good reading in that link. I had no idea the moon was that lumpy. The wiki entry says that despite the mascons there are 4 known stable orbital inclina
by 0_____0 2y ago
Oh wow, good reading in that link.
I had no idea the moon was that lumpy. The wiki entry says that despite the mascons there are 4 known stable orbital inclinations?
- shagie 2y agoThat is correct. The NASA page link (now 404) has a bit more on the orbits and their history. https://web.archive.org/web/20210307002503/https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/06nov_loworbit/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210307002503/https://science.n... And they're very lumpy. > The mascons' gravitational anomaly is so great—half a percent—that it actually would be measurable to astronauts on the lunar surface. "If you were standing at the edge of one of the maria, a plumb bob would hang about a third of a degree off vertical, pointing toward the mascon," Konopliv says. Moreover, an astronaut in full spacesuit and life-support gear whose lunar weight was exactly 50 pounds at the edge of the mascon would weigh 50 pounds and 4 ounces when standing in the mascon's center.
- mmooss 2y agoThat is a great link. Do you know if any of it is outdated now?
- shagie 2y agoIt is still all completely correct. There may be some new findings, but the lunar prospector ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Prospector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Prospector ) did all the work and this was written after that.