A spacecraft is passing Jupiter very close and is catapulted away from it by its gravity at a high speed (swing-by maneuver). Initially, the probe has a velocity of and flies almost head-on towards the planet, which moves in the opposite direction with . After the maneuver, the spacecraft has a velocity of .
What is the speed difference in kilometers per second, to the nearest integer?
Hint: Set up momentum and energy conservation for the spacecraft and Jupiter.
Assumptions: Jupiter has mean distance from the sun and a period of circulation of years.
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The momentum conservation for the probe with mass m and the planet with mass M reads m v + M V ⇒ V ′ = m v ′ + M V ′ = V + γ ( v − v ′ ) with the mass ratio γ = m / M ≪ 1 . The energy conservation reads ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ 2 1 m v 2 + 2 1 M V 2 γ v 2 + V 2 v 2 v + v ′ = 2 1 m v ′ 2 + 2 1 M V ′ 2 = γ v ′ 2 + ( V + γ ( v − v ′ ) ) 2 = γ v ′ 2 + V 2 + 2 γ ( v − v ′ ) V + γ 2 ( v − v ′ ) 2 ≈ γ v ′ 2 + V 2 + 2 γ ( v − v ′ ) V = v ′ 2 + 2 ( v − v ′ ) V = 2 V (Here, we neglected the term proportional to γ 2 .) The insertion of the numerical values provides the result V ⇒ Δ v = − 2 π T a = − 2 π 1 1 . 9 ⋅ 3 6 5 ⋅ 2 4 ⋅ 6 0 ⋅ 6 0 7 . 8 ⋅ 1 0 8 s km ≈ − 1 3 s km = − ( v + v ′ ) = − 2 V ≈ 2 6 s km