Wednesday, May 28, 2014

A geostationary satellite is positioned 35,800 km above earths surface. It takes 24 h to complete one orbit. The radius of the earth is approx....

Hello!


We may suppose that the orbit is a circumference, Earth is a ball (sphere) and the speed of a satellite is constant.


The radius `R` of the orbit is the Earth's radius plus the given height, 6400+35800=42200 (km). The length of the orbit is `2 pi R approx265150` km.


The distance travelled in one hour is 1/24 of the entire orbit's length (it is given that it takes 24 h to complete one orbit, "geostationary" also means that). It is


`(2 pi R)/24=(pi R)/12 approx11048` km. This is the answer.

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