Gravity and topography admittance; Mercury's crust; MESSENGER; Surface porosity; Astronomy and Astrophysics; Space and Planetary Science
Abstract :
[en] A new solution of Mercury's gravity field to degree and order 160, named HgM009, is retrieved through a reprocessing of MESSENGER radio science measurements. By combining our latest gravity field with topography data, localized spectral admittance analyses are carried out to investigate Mercury's crustal and lithospheric properties across the northern hemisphere. The measured spectra are compared with admittances predicted by lithospheric flexure models. The localized gravity/topography admittance analyses yield key information on the lateral variations of the bulk density of the upper crust. Elastic and crustal thicknesses are also adjusted in our study, but the local admittance spectra allow us to constrain these parameters only over a few regions. The average bulk density across the observed areas in the northern hemisphere is 2540 ±60 kg m−3. The crustal porosity is then constrained by using an estimate of the pore-free grain density of surface materials with our measured bulk density. Our estimate of the mean porosity is 14.7 ±1.6 %, which is comparable to, but slightly higher than, the average value measured on the Moon. Larger crustal porosities are observed over heavily cratered regions, suggesting that impact bombardment is the main cause of the crustal porosity.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Genova, Antonio; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Goossens, Sander; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States
Del Vecchio, Edoardo; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Petricca, Flavio; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Beuthe, Mikael; Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
Wieczorek, Mark; Université Côte d'Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, France
Chiarolanza, Gianluca; Università d'Annunzio, Pescara, Italy ; International Research School of Planetary Sciences, Pescara, Italy
di Achille, Gaetano; INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico d'Abruzzo, Teramo, Italy
Mitri, Giuseppe; Università d'Annunzio, Pescara, Italy ; International Research School of Planetary Sciences, Pescara, Italy
Di Stefano, Ivan; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Charlier, Bernard ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géologie > Pétrologie, géochimie endogènes et pétrophysique
Mazarico, Erwan; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States
James, Peter; Department of Geosciences, Baylor University, Waco, United States
MIUR - Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca ASI - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
Funding text :
The gravity field HgM009 and the ancillary information, including the covariance matrix, presented in this study are archived at https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/spring . Our software that enables localized spectral analyses of gravity/topography correlation and admittance is based on the free software package shtools ( Wieczorek and Meschede, 2018 ). We are grateful to Walter S. Kiefer and an anonymous reviewer for helpful and constructive comments on previous versions of this paper. AG acknowledges funding from the Rita Levi Montalcini Programme of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) grant n. 2022-16-HH.0.
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