LP Magnetometer Instrument

ODE:Moon

Mission: Lunar Prospector (LP)

Search Lunar Prospector Magnetometer data in Lunar ODE: Product Search

The Lunar Prospector's (LP) Magnetometer (MAG) instrument was based on the instrument flown on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (Acuna et al., 1992). Some changes were made to the Lunar Prospector version to account for the spinning spacecraft. Also, there was only one magnetometer sensor on Lunar Prospector. The MAG instrumentation consisted of a 3-axis fluxgate magnetometer and an electronics box. The electronics box was common to the MAG and its companion instrument, the Electron Reflectometer (ER). The MAG sensor was a wide-range (up to +/- 65,536 nT), low-noise (6 pT RMS), high-sensitivity (as low as +/- 2 pT), triaxial fluxgate magnetometer. The MAG sensor was an 11 x 6.5 x 9 cm box.

The MAG/ER experiment investigated the origin and nature of lunar crustal magnetic fields and constrained the size of a metallic core. The experiment provided global maps of the lunar crustal magnetic fields and provided estimates of the lunar induced magnetic dipole moment (Binder et al., 1998). More information about the MAG can be found in:

• Acuna, M.H. J. Connerney, P. Wasilewski, R. Lin, K. Anderson, C. Carlson, J. McFadden, D. Curtis, R. Reme, A. Cros, J. Medale, J. Sauvaud, C. D'Uston, S. Bauer, P. Cloutier, M. Mayhew, and N. Ness (1992), Mars Observer magnetic fields investigation, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 97, pp. 7799 - 7814.

• Binder, A.B., W.C. Feldman, G.S. Hubbard, A.S. Konopliv, R.P. Lin, M.H. Acuna, and L.L. Hood (1998), Lunar Prospector searches for polar ice, a metallic core, gas release events, and the moon's origin, Eos, Trans. AGU, 79, 97.

• LP Science Interface Specification

• LP Level 0 Volume Software Interface Specification

• LP Magnetometer Lunar Coordinates Data Description

• LP Magnetic Field Vector Components Data Description

• LP Regional Field Bins at the Spacecraft Altitude Data Description

• LP Large-Scale Vector Field Maps Data Description

 

MAG Products

Processing Level	Product Type	Description	PDS3 Data Set / PDS4 Collection
Raw Data	MDR	NASA Level 0 (Raw/Unprocessed MDR) Data	LP-L-ENG/GRS/NS/APS/MAG/ER-1-MDR-V1.0
Calibrated Data	DATA	LP MAG Vector Measurements Data Collection - LP MAG calibrated data provided as ASCII tables of 1 day duration in Selenocentric Solar Ecliptic (SSE) and Selenographic (SEL) coordinates for 1998-01-16 to 1999-07-29.	urn:nasa:pds:lp-mag-calibrated:data-lunarcrds
	DATAL2	LP Crustal Magnetic Field Data Collection - selected and filtered time series data at 5 second intervals from the LP polar orbital mission to the Moon (January 1998 to July 1999).	urn:nasa:pds:lp-mag-calibrated:data-lunarfield
Derived Data	DATAL3	LP Regional Field Bins at the Spacecraft Altitude Data Collection - LP MAG derived data of regional field maps at the spacecraft altitude for 1998-02-01 to 1999-07-02.	urn:nasa:pds:lp-mag-derived:data-fieldbins
	DATAL4	LP MAG Data Large-Scale Vector Field Maps at a Common Altitude Data Collection - LP MAG derived data of large-scale vector field maps at a common altitude of 37 km. The spatial resolution of the grid (0.25 x 0.25 degrees) is much less than the mean S/C altitude.	urn:nasa:pds:lp-mag-derived:data-lunarsurface