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Improved Calibration of Reflectance Data from the LRO Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and Implications for Space WeatheringThe Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a laser altimeter that also measures the strength of the return pulse from the lunar surface. These data have been used to estimate the reflectance of the lunar surface, including regions lacking direct solar illumination. A new calibration of these data is presented that features lower uncertainties overall and more consistent results in the polar regions. We use these data, along with newly available maps of the distribution of lunar maria, also derived from LRO instrument data, to investigate a newly discovered dependence of the albedo of the lunar maria on latitude (Hemingway et al., [2015]). We confirm that there is an increase in albedo with latitude in the lunar maria, and confirm that this variation is not an artifact arising from the distribution of compositions within the lunar maria, using data from the Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer. Radiative transfer modeling of the albedo dependence within the lunar maria is consistent with the very weak to absent dependence of albedo on latitude in the lunar highlands; the lower abundance of the iron source for space weathering products in the lunar highlands weakens the latitude dependence to the extent that it is only weakly detectable in current data. In addition, photometric mod- els and normalization may take into account the fact that the lunar albedo is latitude dependent, but this dependence can cause errors in normalized reflectance of at most 2% for the majority of near-nadir geometries. We also investigate whether the latitude dependent albedo may have obscured detection of small mare deposits at high latitudes. We find that small regions at high latitudes with low roughness similar to the lunar maria are not mare deposits that may have been misclassified owing to high albedos imposed by the latitude dependence. Finally, we suggest that the only modest correlations among space weathering indicators defined for the lunar samples may be due to mixing of soils from distinct latitudes.
Document ID
20170002314
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Lemelin, M.
(Hawaii Univ. at Manoa Honolulu, HI, United States)
Lucey, P. G.
(Hawaii Univ. at Manoa Honolulu, HI, United States)
Neumann, G. A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Mazarico, E. M.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Barker, M. K.
(Sigma Space Corp. Lanham, MD, United States)
Kakazu, A.
(Hawaii Univ. at Manoa Honolulu, HI, United States)
Trang, D.
(Hawaii Univ. at Manoa Honolulu, HI, United States)
Smith, D. E.
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA, United States)
Zuber, M. T.
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA, United States)
Date Acquired
March 17, 2017
Publication Date
February 10, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: ICARUS
Publisher: Elsevier Inc.
Volume: 273
ISSN: 0019-1035
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Instrumentation And Photography
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN40003
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNA14AB10A
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG15HZ37C
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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