due 12/4/2024 before midnight via Learning Suite +10 possible points
+ +A spacecraft is in a circular parking orbit of 500 km altitude (above sea level) around the earth. A Hohmann transfer will be initiated to reach a circular target orbit at 15,000 km altitude. If the rocket effective exit velocity is 3,000 m/s, how much propellant must be burned as a fraction of the spacecraft’s initial total weight to initiate the transfer? Assume that the change in velocity from the propellant burn occurs instantaneously (or in other words is very fast compared to the time scale of the orbit transfer). We will compute only the first burn into the transfer orbit, the second transfer to the target orbit works similarly.
+ +