A satellite orbits a planet at 500 kilometers from the center of the planet. What is the satellite's speed around the planet if it takes the satellite 250 days to fully orbit the planet.

Help, please.

Your radius is 500 km...which yields circumference a.k.a the orbital distance. You're given time so you can find the velocity from there.

The speed is very very low. It's < 1 km/hour, if you get something bigger than that you did something wrong.

It's pretty easy to figure out, you can figure out the circumference of the circle and your given the time it takes to make one full orbit.

speed = distance/time

circumference (a distance) is = 2 * pi * r = 2 * pi * 500 km
time = 250 days

2 * pi * 500 km / [250day * (24h/1day) * (60minutes/1hr) * (60seconds/1minute)]

3142/21600000

1.46E-4 m/s

This post was edited by Archer on Mar 3 2014 10:21am