Deformation analysis of the unified lunar control networks

This study compares the latest Unified Lunar Control Network, ULCN 2005, solution with the earlier ULCN 1994 solution at global and local scales. At the global scale, the relative rotation, translation, and deformation (normal strains and shears) parameters between the two networks are estimated as a whole using their colocated station Cartesian coordinate differences. At the local scale, the network station coordinate differences are examined in local topocentric coordinate systems whose origins are located at the geometric center of quadrangles and tetrahedrons. This study identified that the omission of the topography in the old ULCN solutions shifted the geometric center of the lunar figure up to 5 km in the lunar equatorial plane and induced a few hundred-meter level global rotations of the ULCN 1994 reference frame with respect to ULCN 2005. The displacements between the old and new control networks are less than ±2 km on the average at the local scale, which behave like translations, caused by the omission of lunar topography in the earlier solution. The contribution of local rigid body rotations and dilatational and compressional components to the local displacements are approximately ±100 m for a quadrangle/tetrahedron of an average side length of 10 km.