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Find the centripetal force of a geocentric satellite in orbit if it is 500km above the Earth and has a mass of 650kg? (Hint: what is the period of a geocentric satellite?)

2006-12-06 12:32:46 · 3 answers · asked by Ha!! 2 in Science & Mathematics Physics

3 answers

Calculate the satellites speed (2π*(500,000 + radius of the Earth)/24 hours. Reduce this to meters/sec. Now square this speed and divide it by the radius of the circle it travels in (500,000 + radius of the Earth) to get the centripital acceleration. Then the centripital force is calculated as F = ma.


Doug

2006-12-06 12:45:10 · answer #1 · answered by doug_donaghue 7 · 2 0

I'll give you as much help as I can without whipping out reference books:

centripetal force is the force required to hold an object in orbit, since it's momentum would tend to have it fling off into space. In this case, the force is gravity.

Now, a potential cheat to this is just to use the Gravity formula to determine what the gravitic pull between the earth and an object 650kg at distance (R+500km) where R = radius of the earth, but I don't think that's how you're supposed to solve this.

The other way is to determine how fast the satellite is travelling. Since it's orbit is the circumference of the circle around the earth at 500km altitude, that's 2 * PI * (R + 500). Since it's geostationary, that means it orbits once per day, so it's speed in meters per second is:
( 2 * PI * (R + 500 ) * (1000m/km)) / ( 24 hr/day * 60 min/hr * 60 sec/min)

Given that it's travelling at that speed and it's mass of 650kg, you can determine how much force is required to keep it in orbit using the formula I'd have to look up, but hopefully you know about (can find).

Ok?

2006-12-06 20:45:20 · answer #2 · answered by TankAnswer 4 · 2 0

ill help u if u help me

2006-12-06 20:35:03 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

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