Potential of Lunar Laser Ranging for the Determination of Earth Orientation Parameters

authored by

Liliane Biskupek, Vishwa Vijay Singh, Jürgen Müller, Mingyue Zhang

Abstract

The distance between the observatories on the Earth and the retro-reflectors on the Moon has been regularly measured with Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) since 1970. In recent years, LLR observations have been carried out at infrared wavelength (OCA, WLRS), resulting in a better distribution of LLR normal points over the lunar orbit and retro-reflectors with a higher accuracy, also leading to a higher number of LLR observations in total. By analysing LLR data, Earth Orientation Parameters (EOPs) can be determined along with other parameters of the Earth-Moon system. Focusing on ΔUT1 and terrestrial pole coordinates the accuracies have improved significantly compared to the previous results. In the past, the reported uncertainties of the estimated parameters were published as three times the formal error from the least-squares adjustment to account for small random and systematic errors in the LLR analysis. To investigate if such a scaling factor is still needed, a sensitivity analysis was performed. The current best accuracies are 12.36 μs for ΔUT1, 0.47 mas for x_p and 0.59 mas for y_p. Also the determined corrections to the long-periodic nutation coefficients of the MHB2000 model are now significantly smaller with higher accuracies, i.e., accuracies better than 0.18 mas are obtained.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Geodesy
QuantumFrontiers

Type

Conference contribution

Pages

235-242

No. of pages

8

Publication date

13.03.2024

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computers in Earth Sciences, Geophysics

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/1345_2024_238 (Access: Open)