Communications satellites are placed in circular orbits where they stay directly over a fixed point on the equator as the earth rotates. These are called geosynchronous orbits. The altitude of a geosynchronous orbit is 3.58 x 10^7 m (approximately 22,00 miles) . Astronomical data are inside the back cover of the book (a) What is the period of a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit?

Video transcript

Welcome back, everybody. We are making observations about a satellite that is placed above the earth in a geo stationary orbit. And we are tasked with finding what the period of the satellite's orbit is. Well, here's the thing or a G geo stationary orbit. This means that the satellite is going to have the same orbit or period as the earth. And we know that the earth rotates once every 24 hours. But we need this in S I units. So we are going to Have to convert this two seconds. We know that in one hour there are 3600 seconds, these units will cancel out. And if you multiply straight across this gives us a final answer of 86,400 seconds corresponding to our final answer. Choice of B. Thank you all so much for watching. Hope this video helped. We will see you all in the next one.