Apiece of space debris is travelling in an elliptical orbit around a planet. at its closest point to the planet, the debris is travelling at 5000ms. when the debris is 1km from the planet, it travels at 5000kmhr. how close does the debris get to the planet in its orbit?

Explanation:

According to Kepler's Second Law of Planetary motion (also known as the law of areas), the angular momentum is constant, that is, it is preserved.

Therefore we will use the principle of conservation of angular momentum to solve this problem:

Knowing (1) Where is expressed in

Being:

(2) and  (3)

Where:

is the mass of space debris

is the velocity of space debris at apogee (closest point to the Earth)

the apogee

is the velocity of space debris at a distance of 10000km

Substituting (2) and (3) in (1):

 (4)

Isolating and solving:

 (5)

 (6)

 (7)

Finally:

answer: he got 23

explanation: