A harmonic spline model for local estimation of planetary gravity fields from line-of-sight acceleration data

The spline interpolation technique is applied to estimate locally the radia l component of a planetary gravity field from residual acceleration data al ong a special direction, the direction of observation from the Earth. After the presentation of the theoretical framework, the method is tested on syn thetic and real data in the case of Venus. It is shown that this spline tec hnique can be used succesfully to build local models of radial gravity fiel ds at the planet surface.