astronomy part two
An ion rocket engine produces 5 Newtons of thrust. What acceleration can it give to a space probe with a mass of 10,000kg?
0.0005 m/s2
The average radius of the Earth's orbit is
1.0 au
Suppose that you lift an object by exerting an upward force of 22 Newtons on it. If gravity exerts a force of 10 Newtons downward on the object, what is the total force on the object?
12 newtons
The first human landing on the Moon was Apollo 11 in
1969
What total force will cause an object with a mass of 10kg to gain 5 meters per second every second?
50 Newtons
The density of water is 1000kg/m3, the density of rock is about 3000kg/m3, and the density of iron is 7800kg/m3. Which of the following densities is closest to the average density of the Earth?
5200kg/m3
If the planets are numbered from 1 to 8, going outward from the Sun, the planet Uranus is number
7
Which of the following types of object could reasonably be described as "dirty snowballs" or, for the larger ones, "flying icebergs"?
Comets
The Apollo program was thought to be part of a "race to the Moon" with the Soviet Union. Actually
It was a close race. The Soviets actually built a Moon rocket and tested it.
Which of the following planets can be said to have almost no atmosphere?
Mercury
The first space probes to land on another planet were from the
Russian Venera series.
Why couldn't we just fly a Space Shuttle to the Moon for at least a fly-by?
The Space Shuttle did not have enough fuel to reach escape velocity.
Water ice can be found on all but one of these planets. Which one has no ice?
Venus
The surface magnetic field of Mercury is
about 1% of the Earth's magnetic field
Galileo's used most of the same tools of thought that the ancient greeks had used. Which of the following approaches did use that would not have seemed natural to the ancient Greeks?
active construction of simplified experiments.
Venus has
an atmosphere of carbon dioxide with about 90 times the surface pressure of Earth's.
Suppose that you drop two objects from the same height at the same time. Both objects are heavy enough to be unaffected by air resistance and one object is twice as heavy. Who predicted that the heavier object would hit the ground long before the lighter one?
aristotle
The absence of a magnetic field of Venus is
as expected because the planet rotates so slowly.
On the present surface of Mars, water has been confirmed to exist
as ice at the poles and water vapor in the atmosphere
Kepler's Laws of planetary motion were originally obtained by fitting accurate observations. Newton explained those laws by a force that acts on each planet. The force that specifically explains Kepler's Laws
attracts each planet to the Sun
At present (within the last few hundred years), the distance from the Earth to the Sun
changes enough to make the intensity of sunlight vary by 6 percent
Milankovich cycles refer to
changes in the intensity of sunlight due to shifts in both the Earth's orbit and rotation axis
The currently accepted theory of how the Moon formed is the
collision theory.
When a space probe uses a gravitational slingshot maneuver, it
comes close to a planet to change the probe's speed and direction.
Most Kuiper Belt Objects are similar in composition to
comets
Relative to the distant stars, Mercury
completes 1.5 rotations each time it orbits the Sun.
Relative to the distant stars, Venus
completes less than one full rotation each time it orbits the Sun
The impacts of large objects on the surface of the Moon have caused
craters.
Comets usually follow orbits which are
elliptical with aphelia far outside the orbit of Mars.
A rocket that leaves the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 8 miles per second will
escape from the Earth's gravity forever.
The magnetic field of Earth's Moon is
essentially zero
The Curiosity Mars rover
has been operating on Mars for six years so far (as of 2018).
The Earth's Moon
is 1/4 the size of the Earth, which is unusually large for a moon.
The Moon's orbit
is somewhat tilted relative to the plane of the Earth's equator.
Compared to the rest of the Lunar surface, the Lunar Maria are
lower and younger
Which of the following objects has no overall magnetic field except for small regions due to magnetized ore deposits?
mars
Which of these planets has a solar day that is very close to an Earth day in length?
mars
When a bullet is fired from a gun, the bullet keeps moving after it leaves the gun barrel because
no force stops it
It is expected that a normal terrestrial planet, with no accidental encounters that could add or subtract moons, should have
no moon.
The first space probe to place a robotic rover on the surface of Mars was
pathfinder
Which of these Moons rises in the West as seen from its primary planet?
phobos
Aristotle said that a moving earthly or mundane object with nothing pushing or pulling on it will always
slow down and stop
Our Sun sends out intense streams of charged particle radiation. The radiation is prevented from hitting the Earth's atmosphere by
the Earth's magnetic field.
For an object that is moving along a straight path, the acceleration is
the change in the object's speed divided by the time it takes.
If you are told that an object that weighs 20 Newtons is raised a distance of 10 meters, you know that
the force of gravity on the object is 20 Newtons
A bazooka is actually a small rocket-launcher. The reason a bazooka does not have a recoil is that
the force on the rocket is exerted by the rocket exhaust and not by the launcher
In comparison to Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation predicted almost the same motions, but with small corrections due to
the gravitational attractions between different planets
The Moon rotates on its axis so that it always keeps
the same side (its far side) pointed away from the Earth
A planet that is following Kepler's Laws, accelerates
toward the Sun.
A planet whose atmospheric pressure is exactly at the triple point of water and whose surface temperature has a range that includes the triple point will have
water as ice or vapor, depending on the temperature.
