The limits of the mascons approximation of the homogeneous polyhedron

摘要

This paper investigates the possibility of modelling a homogeneous polyhedron with a collection of small spherical masses (mascons). Simple methods are presented that allow the packing of a large number of spheres, of different radius, inside a polyhedric shape model with packing fraction larger than 80%. The mascon model is expectedly found to be extremely fast for gravity acceleration computation, even with hundreds of thousands of mascons, and the computation is accurate enough for short term propagation at medium and high altitudes. However, near the surface, the computation inaccuracy remains high, even with a very large number of mascons.