Luna-Glob project in the context of the past and present lunar exploration in Russia

The Russian Luna-Glob project has been conceived with a view to understand the origin of the Earth-Moon system. The objectives and main features of the Luna-Glob mission, which will mainly study the internal structure of the Moon by seismic instruments, are described in the context of the past and current program of lunar exploration in Russia.     

Surface-wave group-delay and attenuation kernels

We derive both 3-D and 2-D Fréchet sensitivity kernels for surface-wave group-delay and anelastic attenuation measurements. A finite-frequency group-delay exhibits 2-D off-ray sensitivity either to the local phase-velocity perturbation  δ c / c   or to its dispersion  ω(∂/∂ω)(δ c / c )  as well as to the local group-velocity perturbation  δ C / C   . This dual dependence makes the ray-theoretical inversion of measured group delays for 2-D maps of  δ C / C   a dubious procedure, unless the lateral variations in group velocity are extremely smooth.     

Dependence of earthquake recurrence times and independence of magnitudes on seismicity history

The fulfillment of a scaling law for earthquake recurrence–time distributions is a clear indication of the importance of correlations in the structure of seismicity. In order to characterize these correlations we measure conditional recurrence–time and magnitude distributions for worldwide seismicity as well as for Southern California during stationary periods. Disregarding the spatial structure, we conclude that the relevant correlations in seismicity are those of the recurrence time with previous recurrence times and magnitudes; in the latter case, the conditional distribution verifies a scaling relation depending on the difference between the magnitudes of the two events defining the recurrence time. In contrast, with our present resolution, magnitude seems to be independent on the history contained in the seismic catalogs (except perhaps for Southern California for very short time scales, less than about 30 min for the magnitude ranges analyzed).