What is the closest orbit to Earth?
It’s Mercury! Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mercury has the smallest orbit. So although it never gets quite as close to the Earth as Venus or Mars, it never gets far away from us also! In fact, Mercury is the closest – for most of the time- planet not only to the Earth, but also to Mars and Venus and…
How far away from the earth does a spacecraft orbiting around the earth have to be in order for the astronauts inside to be weightless?
How far away from the earth does an orbiting spacecraft have to be in order for the astronauts inside to be weightless? zero, the space craft would have to be an infinite distance away. 6. The free-fall acceleration at the surface of planet 1 is 20 m/s2.
How far out is orbit?
By the same token, space is often defined as beginning at the lowest altitude at which satellites can maintain orbits for a reasonable time – which is approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles) above the surface.
How far away is the closest planet to Earth?
Indeed, when Earth and Venus are at their closest approach, their separation is roughly 0.28 AU—no other planet gets nearer to Earth. But just as often, the two planets are at their most distant, when Venus is on the side of the Sun opposite Earth, 1.72 AU away.
What is the distance from the sun to the Earth’s orbit?
One AU is the distance from the Sun to Earth’s orbit, which is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). When measured in astronomical units, the 886,000,000-mile (1,400,000,000-kilometer) distance from the Sun to Saturn’s orbit, is a much more manageable 9.5 AU.
Do satellites stay the same distance from the Earth?
Satellites that orbit Earth, including the moon, do not always stay the same distance from Earth. Sometimes they are closer, and at other times they are farther away. The closest point a satellite comes to Earth is called its perigee. The farthest point is the apogee.
What is the distance of a spacecraft to the Moon?
NOTE: Because we defined the Earth-spacecraft distance as r, the Moon-spacecraft distance is D-r, where D is the Earth-Moon distance (on average, about 384,400 kilometers). Obviously the gravitational constant, G, factors out, as does the mass of the spacecraft.
What is the distance between Earth and Moon at L1?
So the Earth-spacecraft distance is 9.02 times greater than the Moon-spacecraft distance. So the gravitational equilibrium point is 346,000 kilometers from Earth’s center, or about 90\% of the distance from Earth to the Moon. The L1 point, on the other hand, is only about 85\% of the Earth-Moon distance.