Question

Your ship is essentially unpowered through te space. An asteroid almost dead ahead has a mass about 1000 times the ship's mass m. You are moving with speed v0 in +x direction while asteroid is moving in -x direction at v0/1000. With directional thrusters, you can make the ship pass close enough to the asteroid so that asteroid's gravitational field will deflect the ship's direction of motion by some angle θ that depends exactly on how close the ship passes. ( The figure shows "after" situtation. ) Encounter with asteroid can be considered "elastic" collision as you are far from asteroid both initially and finally, so gravitational potential energy between ship and asteroid is essentially zero both initially and finally.

a) You want to know whether this encounter might boost the ship's speed, helping ship escape. Can it?
b) If so, what is angle θ that yields highest final speed?

FINAL y asteroid ship d

Answer 1

Stnce ther not extern ter so anulou momentuwy Conserved So fin spend u more ma xim um spead = 30.