In the Dark

I thought you might enjoy this entry in the Cute Problems folder.

An asteroid is moving on a circular orbit around the Sun with an orbital radius of 3AU when it spontaneously splits into two fragments, which initially move apart along the direction of the original orbit. One fragment has a speed which is a fraction 0.65 of the original speed, the other has a speed of 1.35 times the original speed. The original orbit (solid line) is shown above, along with the two new orbits (dashed and dotted).

1. Which orbit does the fast fragment follow, and which the slow fragment?
2.  Calculate the original orbital speed in AU/year.
3. Calculate the angular momentum per unit mass, h, of the original asteroid and of each of the two fragments in units of AU² per year. [HINT: Show that in these units, for a general orbit of eccentricity e and semi-major axis a, h²=4π² a (1-e²).]
4.  Calculate the eccentricities of the orbits of the two fragments.
5.  Calculate the orbital periods of the two fragments in years.

Answers please through the Comments box. First complete set of answers wins a trip to the Moon on gossamer wings.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2019 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Cute Problems, The Universe and Stuff with tags Asteroid, Kepler's Laws, Orbits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.