MRS2016: Rigid Moon Rotation Series in the Relativistic Approximation

Abstract The rigid Moon rotation problem is studied for the relativistic (kinematical) case, in which the geodetic perturbations in the Moon rotation are taken into account. As the result of this research the high-precision Moon Rotation Series MRS2016 in the relativistic approximation was constructed for the first time and the discrepancies between the high-precision numerical and the semi-analytical solutions of the rigid Moon rotation were investigated with respect to the fixed ecliptic of epoch J2000, by the numerical and analytical methods. The residuals between the numerical solution and MRS2016 in the perturbing terms of the physical librations do not exceed 80 mas and 10 arc seconds over 2000 and 6000 years, respectively.