An astronaut has a mass of on the Earth’s surface where the acceleration due to…
PHYSICS · Subjective · A Level · Physics · Fields and their consequences · Fields and their consequences
Problem
An astronaut has a mass of 70kg on the Earth’s surface where the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8m s−2 and the Earth’s radius is 6.4×106m.
(i) Derive an expression for the astronaut’s weight W(h) at an altitude h above the Earth’s surface in terms of the surface weight W0.
(ii) Determine the altitude (to the nearest kilometre) at which the astronaut’s weight becomes one-sixteenth of the surface value.
(iii) Comment briefly on how this altitude compares with the typical heights of low-Earth-orbit satellites.