Question

A satellite is in a approximately circular orbit 36,000 kilometers from Earth's surface. The radius of earth is about 6400 kilometers. What is the circumference of the satellite's orbit?

Answer 1

Answer:  $266,407.057\ km$

Step-by-step explanation:

The formula used to calculate the circumference of a circle is:

$C=2\pi r$

The radius of the circle is r.

In the diagram you can observe that the radius of the satellite's orbit (r2) is the sum of the radius of the Earth (r1) and the distance from the Earth's surface to the satellite's orbit:

$r2=r1+36,000\ km\\r2=6,400\ km+36,000\ km\\r2=42,400\ km$

Then, the circumference of the satellite's orbit is:

$C=2\pi (42,400\ km)\\C=266,407.057\ km$