Gravity field of Jupiter's moon Amalthea and the implication on a spacecraft trajectory

Before its final plunge into Jupiter in September 2003, GALILEO made a last 'visit' to one of Jupiter's moons - Amalthea. This final flyby of the spacecraft's successful mission occurred on November 5, 2002. In order to analyse the spacecraft data with respect to Amalthea's gravity field, interior models of the moon had to be provided. The method used for this approach is based on the numerical integration of infinitesimal volume elements, which are calculated by the scale factors of a three-axial ellipsoid (elliptic coordinates). Within this routine the shape information of Amalthea can be included as well. To derive the gravity field coefficients of the body, the second method of Neumann was applied. Based on the spacecraft trajectory data provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, GALILEO's velocity perturbations at closest approach could be calculated. We have derived the harmonic coefficients of Amalthea's gravity field up to degree and order six, for both homogeneous and reasonable heterogeneous cases. Founded on these numbers we calculated the impact on the trajectory of GALILEO, compared it to existing Doppler data and made predictions for future spacecraft flybys. Although no two-way Doppler-data was available during the flyby and the harmonic coefficients of the gravity field are buried in the one-way Doppler-noise, the gravity field models of Amalthea show the possible interior structure of the moon and can be a basis for further exploration of the Jovian system. In order to get valuable information about the gravity field of this tiny rocky moon, a much closer flyby than that of GALILEO should be anticipated. The above stated model approach can be used for any planetary body.