Question

The largest satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto is Charon which has a mass of 1.586x 10^22 kg and a 1212 km diameter. Charon is being visited by the intrepid geologist astronaut, Lil Suzi. Glad that her long trip from Ceres is over, in celebration she pitched a 3 kg piece of Charon’s ice horizontally at 22 meters per second over the edge of serendipity chasma (a canyon) at a location where the canyon is 1560 meters deep.

A) if the ice balls release point Is 2 meters above the canyon rim, how much time is the ice ball fly in flight before it hits the canyon floor?

B) what is the horizontal distance from the ice balls release location to its impact location?

C) what is the ice balls velocity (speed and angle) when it hits the canyon floor?

Answer 1

Assuming there is no significant change in acceleration due to gravity through the entire flight of the ice ball.

The acceleration due to gravity at the surface of the satellite is

PART A:

Initial vertical velocity is zero so

So, it would take 32.8 seconds to reach the floor.

PART B:

Initial horizontal velocity

Total time taken = 32.8 s.

So, the total horizontal distance

So, the horizontal distance traveled is 721.6 m.

PART C:

As there is no force acting horizontally, the horizontal velocity is same

Now, the vertical velocity

Therefore total velocity is

The angle of impact from the horizontal is given by