Table Of ContentSCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS OF LUNAR LASER RANGING
ASTROPHYSICS AND
SPACE SCIENCE LIBRARY
A SERIES OF BOOKS ON THE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
OF SPACE SCIENCE AND OF GENERAL GEOPHYSICS AND ASTROPHYSICS
PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH THE JOURNAL
SPACE SCIENCE REVIEWS
Editorial Board
J. E. BLAMONT, Laboratoire d'Aeronomie, Verrieres, France
R. L. F. BOYD, University College, London, England
L. GOLDBERG, Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Ariz., U.S.A.
C. DE JAGER, University of Utrecht, Holland
Z. KOPAL, University of Manchester, Manchester, England
G. H. LUDWIG, NOAA, National Environmental Satellite Service, Suitland, Md., U.S.A.
R. LUST, President Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur F8rderung der Wissenschaften, Milnchen, F.R. G.
B. M. MCCORMAC, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif., U.S.A.
H. E. NEWELL, NASA, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
L. I. SEDOV, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, U.S.S.R.
Z. SVESTKA,American Science and Engineering, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.
VOLUME 62
PROCEEDINGS
SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS
OF LUNAR LASER RANGING
PROCEEDINGS OF A SYMPOSIUM HELD IN AUSTIN, TEX., U.S.A.,
8 - 10 JUNE, 1976
haited by
J. DERRAL MULHOLLAND
University of Texas at Austin, Tex., U.S.A.
Associate Editors:
Creighton A. Burk, University of Texas Marine Science Institute
Eric C. Silverberg, University of Texas McDonald Observatory
With a Foreword by Neil A. Armstrong
Sponsored by:
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS,
THE INTERNATIONAL UNION OF GEODESY AND GEOPHYSICS,
THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION AND
THE ICSU COMMITTEE ON SPACE RESEARCH
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A.
ISBN-\3: 978-94-010-1210-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1208-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1208-9
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
P.O. Box 17. Dordrecht. Holland
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A .• Canada and Mexico
by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Inc.
Lincoln Building. 160 Old Derby Street. Hingham,
Mass. 02043. U.S.A.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright ©1977 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dordrecht. Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1977
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means. electronic or mechanical
including photocopying. recording or by any informational storage and,
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
FOREWORD XIII
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS XV
J. Dorman and G. V. Latham
MAURICE EWING AND THE EXPLORATION OF THE OCEANS (Dedicatory
address)
J. D. Mulholland
MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF LUNAR LASER MEASURES AND THEIR
APPLICATION TO IMPROVEMENT OF PHYSICAL PARAMETERS
PART I - LUNAR SCIENCE
J. Kovalevsky
SCIENTIFIC EXPECTATIONS IN THE SELENOSCIENCES 21
J. G. Williams
PRESENT SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS FROM LUNAR LASER RANGING 37
R. W. King, C. C. Counselman III, and I. I. Shapiro
LUNAR DYNAMICS AND SELENODESY: RESULTS FROM ANALYSIS OF
VLBI AND LASER DATA 51
O. Calame
FREE LIBRATIONS OF THE MOON FROM LUNAR LASER RANGING 53
W. J. Breedlove, Jr.
A NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF FOURTH DEGREE TERMS IN
THE EARTH-MOON MUTUAL POTENTIAL ON LUNAR PHYSICAL LIBRATIONS 65
A. Migus
ANALYTICAL THEORY FOR THE ROTATION OF THE MOON 79
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART II - GRAVITATION
I. I. Shapiro, C. C. Counselman III, and R. W. King
VERIFICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUIVALENCE FOR MASSIVE
BODIES 89
L. L. Smalley
CONSEQUENCE OF INTEGRAL CONSERVATION LAWS ON METRIC
PARAMETERS IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE NORDTVEDT EFFECT 91
PART III - GEOPHYSICS AND GEODESY
D. E. Smylie
WHOLE EARTH DYNAMICS AND LUNAR LASER RANGING 105
P. McClure
CORE-RESONANCE EFFECTS ON THE EARTH'S ANGULAR MOMENTUM
VECTOR AND ROTATION AXIS - A GENERALIZED MODEL 131
P. Brosche and J. Sundermann
EFFECTS OF OCEANIC TIDES ON THE ROTATION OF THE EARTH 133
R. O. Vicente
DYNAMICS OF POLAR MOTION AND PLATE TECTONICS 143
S. W. Henriksen
THE ROLE OF EXTREMELY ACCURATE SURVEYING TECHNIQUES IN
EXISTING GEODETIC NETWORKS 149
G. V. Latham and H. J. Dorman
AN INTERMEDIATE TERM STRATEGY FOR DEPLOYMENT OF MOBILE LASER
STATIONS 157
P. L. Bender and J. E. Faller
SUGGESTED PACIFIC PLATE DISTORTION EXPERIMENTS 167
PART IV - OBSERVATION OF EARTH ROTATION
B. Kolaczek
ON THE PROBLEMS OF THE ASTROMETRIC METHODS AND OF THE LUNAR
LASER RANGING IN THE STUDY OF THE EARTH'S ROTATION 171
A. W. Harris and J. G. Williams
EARTH ROTATION STUDY USING LUNAR LASER RANGING DATA 179
P. J. Shelus, S. W. Evans, and J. D.Mulholland
EARTH ROTATION AS INFERRED FROM McDONALD OBSERVATORY LUNAR
LASER OBSERVATIONS DURING OCTOBER 1975 191
TABLE OF CONTENTS VII
A. Stolz and D. Larden
ACCURACY OBTAINABLE FOR UNIVERSAL TIME AND POLAR MOTION
DURING THE EROLD CAMPAIGN 201
P. L. Bender and A. Stolz
McDONALD UTO RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EROLD CAMPAIGN 217
R. W. King, T. A. Clark, C. C. Counselman III, D. S. Robertson,
I. I. Shapiro, and C. A. Knight
UNIVERSAL TIME: LUNAR RANGING RESULTS AND COMPARISONS WITH
VLBI AND CLASSICAL TECHNIQUES 219
PART V - COMPLEMENTARY OBSERVATIONS
P. Morgan
A REVIEW OF PERTURBING PARAMETERS WHICH AFFECT THE QUALITY
OF LASER DISTANCE MEASUREMENTS 223
J. T. Kuo
TIDAL CORRECTIONS AT McDONALD AND HALEAKALA 241
J. Dorman and G. V. Latham
STRATEGY FOR GEOPHYSICAL OBSERVATIONS AT LASER SITES -
McDONALD OBSERVATORY 255
E. Berg and G. H. Sutton
THE DEFORMATIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE HALEAKALA LUNAR LASER
RANGING OBSERVATORY 263
J. E. Faller and J. Levine
THE MEASUREMENT OF THE POSITIONS OF POINTS ON THE EARTH'S
SURFACE USING AN ABSOLUTE GRAVIMETER AND A MULTI-WAVELENGTH
GEODIMETER AS COMPLEMENTS TO EXTRATERRESTRIAL TECHNIQUES 277
C. C. Counselman III
GEODESY BY RADIO INTERFEROMETRY 285
M. A. Slade, W. S. Sinclair, A. W. Harris, R. A. Preston,
and.J. G. Williams
ALSEP-QUASAR VLBI: COMPLEMENTARY OBSERVABLE FOR LASER
RANGING 287
J. L. Hughes
LASER RANGING TECHNIQUES REQUIRED TO TEST DIRAC'S
COSMOLOGICAL MODEL 289
IX
PREFACE
The progress of science during the past centuries has been in
some measure energized by the development of new technologies.
People are no more intelligent now than they were five
centuries ago, or indeed five millenia ago. The differences
are in the pool of past experience and the availability of
means for manipulating the physical and mental environment.
Until fairly recently, the development of new technologies in
astronomy and geodesy has served primarily either to broaden
the scope of phenomena that could be studied or to improve the
precision with which one could examine already-studied phenomena.
There seemed to be no likelihood that a situation could arise
similar to that in particle physics, where the uncertainty
principle indicates that the observation of the state of an
object alters that state, affecting the observation. Indeed,
we have not yet reached that point, but certain of the new
techniques have introduced a degree of complication and inter
dependence perhaps not previously encountered in the macro
sciences. When observational capability is so fine that the
data can be corrupted by the tidal motions of the instruments,
for example, then there are a myriad of physical effects that
must be considered in analyzing the data; the happy aspect of
this is that the data can be used to study exactly these same
effects. The complication does not, however, extend only to
predictive computations against which the data are compared.
The non-linear intereactions between different effects require
that the complication be extended to the process of determining
empirical values of physically-interesting parameters. With
such data, it is no longer possible to study single phenomena
in isolation. Even if one's goal is to study a celestial object,
it is necessary also to study the Earth; even if one's goal
is to study the Earth, it is necessary also to study some
celestial object. When observations can be made with decimetric
or centimetric accuracy, then astronomy, geophysics, and geodesy
are no longer distinct and separate subjects, if indeed they
ever were.
Several techniques now exist that fit this description, based
x PREFACE
on some application of either radio-frequency interferometry or
of optical radar. One of these techniques was born when, more
than a dozen years ago, James E. Faller (then a graduaLe
student) suggested that relativistic theories of gravitation
could be tested by time delay measurements between Ea~th and
Moon, using very short laser pulses in conjunction wi~h retro
reflectors emplanted on the lunar surface. The idea was not
greeted with immediate enthusiasm, but eventually a group of
scientists proposed that it be incorporated in~o the Apollo
Project. It was accepted,and the phrase "lun~r laser ranging"
(LLR) went into the scientific language. Since that time, five
reflector arrays have been deposited on the lunar surface,
three in the course of Apollo activity and two on Lunakhod
roving vehicles. At this writing, ranging operations have been
attempted from nine sites in five countries. New facilities
are being tested or constructed at three of these 'sites, as
well as one replacement site. Although there is only one
station currently producing data on a sustained ,near-daily
basis, it is reasonable to suppose that the immediate future
will see a fully-operational network of five to seven fixed
stations, working in conjunction with one or more mobile
stations that can be used for periodic geodetic surveys of a
few tens of geophysically interesting sites.
The data that have been collected in the past seven years have
already led to significant improvements in the understanding
of some aspects of the Earth-Moon system, and the' promise for
even more important developments in the future seems evident.
What is more evident is that LLR is arrived at a turning point
with the establishment of the global network now building.
Until now, the problems and the discoveries have been largely
astronomical; in future, they will be largely geophysical.
The primary purposes of this symposium were to assess the uses
to which the data acquired by this technique have ,already been
put, and to address the directions to be sought in the future.
I believe that the papers in this collectio~ ~eflect adequ~tely
both the breadth and the depth of the discu~sions that took
place, even though proceedings of a conference are nearly always
a poor surrogate for the actual interactions that take place
under such circumstances.
For my own part, I have been much honored to have been able to
guide the symposium to its successful conclusion, and I am
grateful to those who have made it possible. After several
years of nearly total involvement in LLR activities, my own
role in this area is now much diminished, but the interest
remains. Independently of my own participation, I believe that
the technique has shown a very powerful cap~city to deal with
a certain class of physical problem, the class being best de
fined by the papers in this collection. I am content to have
PREFACE XI
made some contribution to this process. I wish to thank those
who have powered the LLR activity during its formative years:
in particular, our conscience R. H. Dicke, our evangelist C. O.
Alley, our motive force P. L. Bender, and our programmatic
bulwark A. T. Strickland. Without these people and their
efforts, there would be no LLR program. Many others, of
course, have made vital contributions, and here I must confess
that I am not aware of all of them. One must cite, however,
the support over many years of J.-C. Husson, leading to the
French construction of the Lunakhod reflectors.
The IUGG/COSPAR/IAU symposium "Scientific Applications of
Lunar Laser Ranging" was held in Austin, Texas, from 8 to 10
June 1976, at the invitation of Dr. H. J. Smith, Chairman of
the University of Texas Astronomy Department and the Director
of the McDonald Observatory. The Scientific Organizing
Committee included Drs. E. M. Gaposchkin, B. Guinot, Yu. L.
Kokurin, B. Ko1aczek, G. V. Latham, P. Morgan, J. D. Mulholland
(Chairman), and E. C. Silverberg. The Local Organizing
Committee consisted of Dr. C. A. Burk, Prof. D. S. Evans
(Chairman), Mr. C. E. Jenkins, Dr. G. V. Latham, Dr. J. D.
Mulholland (Secretary), Dr. E. C. Silverberg (Vice-Chairman),
Prof. H. J. Smith, and Ms. J. Strong (Coordinator).
The symposium was supported financially by the IUGG and the
IAU. The preparation of the proceedings for publication was
subsidized by the University of "Texas, thanks to the interven
tion of Vice-President H. E. Sutton. The splendidly-handled
physical arrangements were made by J. Strong, while the most
difficult task of assuring the physical homogeneity of the
contributions to the proceedings was dispatched most admirably
by N. Otto. Without the latter two, the meeting would have
been a shambles, and the present book would not exist; I cannot
adequately express my gratitude to them. Finally, I must say
that I have enjoyed a happy degree of cooperation from the
associate editors, as well as with the majority of the authors.
I thank them and all of the many other people who have contri
buted to the organization and conduct of the symposium and to
the production of these proceedings.
J. Derra1 Mulholland
Austin
September 1976
