Farside lunar gravity from a mass point model

A mass point representation of the lunar gravity field was determined from the long-period orbital variations of the Apollo 15 and 16 subsatellites and Lunar Orbiter V. A radial acceleration contour map, evaluated at 100 km altitude from the lunar surface, shows that the nearside is in close agreement with the result derived from the line of sight method by Muller and Sjogren. The farside map shows the highland regions as broad positive gravity anomaly areas and the basins such as Korolev, Hertzsprung, Moscoviense, Mendeleev, and Tsiolkovsky as localized, negative gravity anomaly regions. The farside map has a first-order agreement with the result derived from the harmonic field method by Ferrari. The mass points analysis indicates that the nearside is almost all negative gravity anomaly regions except for the known positive mass anomaly basins (mascons) and the farside is almost all positive gravity anomaly regions except for some localized negative areas near the basins.