Investigation of the Moon’s Rotation in the Relativistic Approximation

The problem of the Moon’s rotation in the relativistic approximation, in which the most essential relativistic perturbations (geodesic perturbations) in the Moon’s rotation are taken into account, is studied. The discrepancies in the comparison between high-precision numerical solutions and semi-analytical solutions of the problem of the Moon’s rotation are investigated by numerical and analytical methods with respect to the fixed ecliptic of the J2000 epoch. As a result, the highly precise Moon rotation series MRS2016 are obtained for the first time in the relativistic approximation. The residual discrepancies between numerical integration and MRS2016 in perturbing terms of the physical librations of the Moon do not surpass 64 mas over 2000 years and 8 arc seconds over 6000 years.