1) Because of the mass involved in constructing and transportinga lander, the first human expedition to Mars will likely be anorbital mission. A geosynchronous orbit seems plausible, allowingastronauts in the spacecraft to have continuous line-of-sightcontrol of rovers on the surface. What is the altitude above thesurface of Mars for geosynchronous orbit? You’ll need to do someresearch to find the mass of Mars and its rotation period.
2) Using the expression for the escape velocity from aplanet.
a) Describe the physics that went into your derivation of theescape velocity and list the formula again.
b) Use this formula to calculate the escape velocity of Mars andcompare it with Earth. List the sources where you obtained theproperties of each planet for your calculation.
c) What insight might you glean from the above calculation on whyMars has a thinner atmosphere than the Earth?
3) Assuming that the outer planets (Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune)are in equilibrium with the solar radiation, calculate theeffective surface temperature of these 3 planets and show allintermediate steps. You can assume albedos of 0.5, 0.6, and 0.6,for Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, respectively. The solar luminosityis 3.83 x 1026 W. How do these temperatures compare with theirobserved temperatures?
