The topography, gravity, and tectonics of the terrestrial planets

The topography and gravity of some of the solid earth bodies in our solar system including the Moon, Mercury, and Mars are used to investigate the density structure, lithospheric structure and resultant tectonic deformation. The difficulties in representing the gravitational field based on satellite data are explored including possible solutions including a change of representational basis function. The problem of representing the gravitational field based on non-uniform data distributions is addressed. Early results and expected returns from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury including compressional tectonics are studied.