um...math/space question...?

Question

okay, i cannot figure this out for the life of me...please help!

-The Voyager 2 went an average velocity 42,000 mph. ( 19 kilometers a second)

-It took 12 years for the Voyager 2 to reach Neptune.

-If there are 105,120 hours in a year, how far away is Neptune from Earth?

thanks so much!

Answer 1

It went ( 42,000 miles / 1 hour ) x (12 years ) x ( 105,120 hours / 1 year ) =

52,980,480,000 miles

Looking up other charts, the average distance from the sun to Neptune is:

2,798,622,971 miles

Checking elsewhere, as of July 14, 2006, the Voyager 2 was

7,367,000,000 miles from Earth, after 29 years in space

Now, let's look at the figures again. There are 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year, or 24 x 365 = 8,760 hours in a year, not 105,120 hours. So, let's do the math again:

It went ( 42,000 miles / 1 hour ) x (12 years ) x ( 8,760 hours / 1 year ) =

4,415,040,000 miles

Now, that's much better, isn't it?

Answer 2

There are 365 * 24 = 8,760 hours in a year and 12 * 8,760 = 105,120 hours in 12 years.
So the distance traveled in 12 years is 105,120 * 42,000 = 4,415,040,000 miles. That is about 4.4 billion, which is farther than the true distance because Voyager did not take a direct route. It swung by Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus on the way, changing course at each planet.

Answer 3

The response here will be how far has did Voyager travel by the time it reached Neptune, not how far Neptune is away from Earth, which, BTW, changes with time.

Answer 4

Neptune's distance from Earth is probably available online somewhere, but you can't calculate it directly by those figures. A spacecraft does not follow a straight line, it uses the gravity of planets and the sun to swing around here and there, giving it more speed and an indirect path towards the outer edge of the solar system.

Answer 5

Steve is correct. The 42k mph over 12y calculation will not give you the distance from earth to Neptune. It WILL however give you the TOTAL distance travelled by the spacecraft to get to Neptune.

Now Simply, to calculate the distance from Neptune to Earth we need some other DATA.

Mean distance of Earth to Sol (the sun) is approx. 149,597,870.691 km or what is called an AU (Astronomical Unit)

Mean distance of Neptune to Sol is approx. 4,504,300,000 km or approx. 30.0611 AU.

So when Neptune and Earth are at opposite side of Sol to each other, or in Opposition, they would be approx. 31.0611 AUs apart or (149,597,870.691 x 31.0611) = 4,646,674,418 km approx.

When both planets are on the same side of Sol, they would be approx. 29.0611 AUs apart or (149,597,870.691 x 29.0611) = 4,347,478,679.94 km.

Answer 6

Normally u put your space craft in a orbit and that means that closet to the sun u are near max velocity ,and as u go out to Neptune it will be very slow.

Answer 7

(42,000 miles/hour) x (105,120 hour/year) x (12 year)
=52,980,480,000 miles or 5.3 x 10^10 miles