Table of Contents
What affects the radius of an orbit?
As seen in the equation v = SQRT(G * Mcentral / R), the mass of the central body (earth) and the radius of the orbit affect orbital speed. The orbital radius is in turn dependent upon the height of the satellite above the earth.
Does the radius of the orbit increase or decrease?
Orbital velocity decreases with radius, yet to increase altitude a spaceship must accelerate. Where does the velocity go? So in other words, v decreases as r increases.
What forces affect satellites?
Consider a projectile launched horizontally from the top of the legendary Newton’s Mountain – at a location high above the influence of air drag. As the projectile moves horizontally in a direction tangent to the earth, the force of gravity would pull it downward.
How does radius affect period of orbit?
Humans have been studying orbital mechanics since 1543, when Copernicus discovered that planets, including the Earth, orbit the sun, and that planets with a larger orbital radius around their star have a longer period and thus a slower velocity.
Why does orbital velocity decrease?
Is this due to the gravitational field being weaker at longer distances? In that case, the answer is that orbital speeds decrease because V itself increases at longer distances. This is simply conservation of energy: 12mv2+mV(|r−r0|)=E, and if V becomes less negative then v2 must be smaller.
What force causes a satellite to orbit Earth?
Gravity
Gravity—combined with the satellite’s momentum from its launch into space—cause the satellite to go into orbit above Earth, instead of falling back down to the ground.
What happens when orbital radius increases?
Since no external force or torque acting on the satellite, the angular momentum of the object is conserved when the radius of the orbit is increased. The angular momentum, is constant. The square of the radius of the orbit and the angular velocity are in inverse proportion.
What happens to the orbital velocity of a satellite when the radius of orbit is increased?
What happens when a satellite slows down in orbit?
It just happens that the slowing is enough to give the satellite a circular orbit, at the new, lower height, and thus at a higher velocity, than it had at the start of this process. The three steps of frictional slowing, orbital speed-up and frictional slowing combine to give an orbital speed-up
What is the relationship between orbital speed and orbital radius?
The relationship between the orbital speed and radius of a planet can be applied to the orbit of a satellite around the Earth by replacing the mass of the Sun, Ms, with that of the Earth, ME. This enables the speed of a satellite to be calculated at any orbital radius.
What happens when a satellite travels through a resistive medium?
Traveling through a resistive medium causes the satellite’s orbital energy to dissipate in more or less random directions. The satellite comes down.
How does gravity affect satellites in outer space?
Gravity holds most of it near the Earth, but out near the border of space there are very few particles, but certainly enough to slow down a satellite that ventures too close to the Earth. Satellites carry fuel to help maintain their orbits, but when that fuel runs out… sooner or later they will fall back to the ground.