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Understanding the Moon’s internal structure through moonquake observations and remote sensing technologies

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Abstract

Explorations for the interior structure of the Moon mainly involve three technologies: the early gravitational observations via circumlunar satellites, the moonquake observations during the Apollo period, and the recent high-resolution remote sensing observations. Based on these technologies, we divided the development of the moon’s interior structure into three stages. The first stage is the discovery of high-density anomalous masses (mascons) on the lunar surface with the low-order gravitational field models, which were obtained by observing perturbations of the early lunar orbital satellites. The second stage is the preliminary understanding of the layer structure with the help of moonquake observations during the Apollo period. The third stage is the deep understanding of the structure of the lunar crust, mantle, and core, with the use of high-resolution remote sensing data and the reassessment of moonquake data from the Apollo’s mission. This paper gave detailed introduction and comments on different observation technologies, gathered data, and data processing techniques used at the three stages. In addition, this paper analyzed the current issues in the researches on the Moon’s internal structure and discussed the prospects for future explorations.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which improved the quality of this paper. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41604004, 41374024) and the Hubei Province Natural Science Foundation Innovation Group Project (Grant No. 2015CFA011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Weifeng Hao, Fei Li & Chi Xiao

  2. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Fei Li, Jianguo Yan & Mao Ye

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  1. Weifeng Hao
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  2. Fei Li
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Correspondence to Fei Li.

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Hao, W., Li, F., Xiao, C. et al. Understanding the Moon’s internal structure through moonquake observations and remote sensing technologies. Sci. China Earth Sci. 61, 995–1006 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9197-4

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