- Question 2:
- 2. If it took only about a year for the New
Horizons spacecraft to travel from Earth to Jupiter (passing
Mars’ orbit),
why will it take eight years to get from Jupiter to Pluto (passing
the orbits of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune)? Note: The graphic
Timeline of New Horizons’ nine-year journey from Earth
to Pluto may help you answer this question.
- Answer:
-
As the Timeline of New Horizons’ nine-year journey
from Earth to Pluto graphic shows, the distance between Earth and
Jupiter is much smaller than the distance between Jupiter and
Pluto. The planets are not equally spaced. The farther a planet
is from the Sun, the greater the distance to its nearest neighbor.
The distance between Jupiter and Pluto is almost nine times
greater than the distance between Earth and Jupiter. The added
speed of the spacecraft will cut the journey time to eight
years.
<< Back to discussion questions |
