Astronomy Exam chapters 5-8
Pathfinder was the first
to use airbags to land on Mars.
The dark markings on the Full Moon that make up the face of the "Man in the Moon" are called Lunar
maria.
An ion rocket engine produces 1 Newton of thrust. What acceleration can it give to a space probe with a mass of 1000kg?
0.001 m/s².
The angle between the rotation axis of a planet and the perpendicular to the plane of its orbit is called its "axial tilt." The axial tilt of Mercury is
0.01 degrees.
Suppose that you lift an object by exerting an upward force of 12 Newtons on it. If gravity exerts a force of 10 Newtons downward on the object, what is the total force on the object?
10 Newtons.
The first human landing on the Moon was Apollo 11 in
1969.
What total force will cause an object with a mass of 5kg to gain 10 meters per second every second?
50 Newtons.
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 both objects would hit the ground at the same time?
Galileo.
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 these sequences places the outer planets in the correct order from the Sun, from the closest to the farthest.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (farthest)
Which of these sequences places the inner planets in the correct order from the Sun, from the closest to the farthest?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars (farthest)
The first space probes to land on another planet were from the
Russian Venera series.
When Newton calculated the magnitude of the acceleration of Earth's Moon, and compared it to the acceleration of falling objects on the surface of the Earth, he found that
The Moon's acceleration was smaller.
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.
Why don't we just shoot all of our really nasty waste products into the Sun where they could not possibly bother anyone?
The Sun is actually the hardest part of the Solar System to get to from here.
A book, weighing 10 Newtons, sits on a table. Which of the following pairs of forces is an action-reaction pair?
The force that the book exerts on the table and the force that the table exerts on the book.
Which of the following planets or moons has an atmosphere with about 90 times the surface pressure of Earth's.
Venus
Which of the following three systems is regarded as the most normal for a terrestrial planet?
Venus, with no moons at all.
A lunar crater is best described as
a circular ring wall surrounding a flat area.
According to the currently accepted model of how planets generate magnetic fields, a rotating planet with a substantial magnetic field must contain
a liquid electrical conductor.
The magnetic field of Mercury is
about 1% of the Earth's magnetic field.
Mars has
an atmosphere of carbon dioxide with about 1% the surface pressure of Earth's.
Current theory says that the Moon formed when
another planet collided with the Earth.
On the present surface of Mars, water has been confirmed to exist
as ice at the poles and water vapor in the atmosphere.
For a planet to have substantial amounts of liquid water on its surface, it must have
atmospheric pressure above the triple point of water.
Space probes often use gravitational slingshot maneuvers. The main purpose of these maneuvers is to
change the direction and speed of the probe without using rockets.
Which of the following objects would be most likely to have a long elliptical orbit that takes it from far outside the orbit of Mars to a close approach to the Sun?
comet
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 magnetic field of Earth's Moon is
essentially zero.
Most Kuiper Belt objects can best be described as
flying lakes or possibly flying oceans.
Many asteroids can best be described as
flying rocks or possibly flying mountains.
The International Space Station (ISS) is in a roughly circular orbit near the surface of the Earth, moving at around 5 miles per second. Suppose that a rocket pushes it and quickly increases its speed to 6 miles per second. The ISS will then
follow an ellipse that rises and then descends again.
Freely falling objects with different masses fall with the same acceleration because
gravity exerts more force on the more massive object.
The density of rock is about 3000kg/m³. The density of the Earth is
greater than 3000kg/m³ because the Earth has an iron core.
Mars
has a solar day that is very close to an Earth day in length.
The Opportunity Mars rover
has been operating on Mars for fourteen years so far (as of 2018).
The Curiosity Mars rover
has been operating on Mars for six years so far (as of 2018).
The statement that lunar material is much "dryer" than Earth material refers to the absence of
hydrated minerals.
If the acceleration of an object is zero, its speed
is decreasing.
According to Newton's Law of Gravity, the gravitational attraction of the Earth for other objects, such as the Moon, apples on trees and space shuttles in low earth orbit,
is smaller for objects farther from the Earth but never vanishes entirely.
Galileo said that a moving object with nothing pushing or pulling on it will always
keep moving at the same speed.
The number of maria on the side of the Moon facing away from the Earth is
less than on the side facing Earth.
The Surveyor series of spacecraft
made unmanned landings on the Moon in the 1960s.
The key argument against the Moon forming from the Earth alone, by breakup of a single object is that the Moon's
orbit is tilted relative to Earth's equator.
Aristotle said that a moving earthly or `mundane' object with nothing pushing or pulling on it will always
slow down and stop.
Since the last Apollo mission to the Moon and the last Soviet LUNA sample-return mission
spacecraft began to be sent there again by 1994.
An artificial satellite such as the International Space Station stays up because
the Earth curves out from under it as fast as it falls.
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.
An astronomical unit is defined to be
the average distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The force that acts on a rocket because its engine is firing is exerted by
the exhaust from the rocket.
If you are told that a 20 kilogram object is raised by 10 meters, you know that
the mass of the object is 20 kilograms.
Milankovich cycles refer to
the regular shifting of the Earth's rotation axis.
Moon missions since 2007 have mostly been focused on
the search for water needed for a Moon base.
The Moon rotates on its axis so that it always keeps the same side
toward the Earth.
When Newton calculated the magnitude and direction of the acceleration for a planet that was following Kepler's Laws, he found that the direction of the acceleration was
toward the Sun.
Asteroids are
usually found in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The distance from the Earth to the Moon
varies enough that sometimes we get an annular solar eclipse.
At present (within the last few hundred years) the orbit of Mars around the Sun is
very elliptical so that.the intensity of sunlight varies by 40 percent.