Advertisements
Advertisements
Question
How is a satellite maintained in nearly circular orbit?
Advertisements
Solution
Artificial satellites are made to revolve in an orbit at a height of few hundred kilometres. At this altitude, the friction due to air is negligible. The satellite is carried by a rocket to the desired height and released horizontally with a high velocity, so that it remains moving in a nearly circular orbit.
APPEARS IN
RELATED QUESTIONS
Fill in the blank and explain the statement with reasoning:
If the height of the orbit of a satellite from the earth surface is increased, the tangential velocity of the satellite will ......
Mahendra and Virat are sitting at a distance of 1 metre from each other. Their masses are 75 kg and 80 kg respectively. What is the gravitational force between them? G = 6.67 x 10-11 Nm2/kg2
Observe the figure and write the answers.

- Name the outer orbit.
- Which satellites revolve in low earth orbits?
- Which various orbits are given in the figure?
- Give an example of a launch vehicle based on Newton’s third law.
Write functions of Military satellite and Navigational satellite.
Note the relationship between the entries in all the three columns in the table and rewrite the table.
| Column-1 (Location) |
Column-2 Height from the earth’s surface (km) |
Column-3 g (m/s2) |
| Earth’s surface (average) | 8.8 | 0.225 |
| Mount Everest | 36.6 | 9.81 |
| Maximum height ever reached by manmade balloon | 400 | 9.8 |
| Orbit of a typical weather satellite | 35700 | 9.77 |
| Orbit of communication satellite | 0 | 8.7 |
Define orbital velocity.
Numerical problem.
Calculate the speed with which a satellite moves if it is at a height of 36,000 km from the Earth’s surface and has an orbital period of 24 hr (Take R = 6370 km) [Hint: Convert hr into seconds before doing calculation]
Numerical problem.
At an orbital height of 400 km, find the orbital period of the satellite.
What is microgravity?
The orbit of a satellite is exactly 35780 km above the earth's surface and its tangential velocity is 3.08 km/s.
How much time the satellite will take to complete one revolution around the earth?
(Radius of earth = 6400 km.)
