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[nb 1] Earth's orbital speed averages 29.78 km/s (19 mi/s; 107,208 km/h; 66,616 mph), which is fast enough to cover the planet's diameter in 7 minutes and the distance to the Moon in 4 hours. [3] The point towards which the Earth in its solar orbit is directed at any given instant is known as the "apex of the Earth's way".
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
The tangential speed of Earth's rotation at a point on Earth can be approximated by multiplying the speed at the equator by the cosine of the latitude. [42] For example, the Kennedy Space Center is located at latitude 28.59° N, which yields a speed of: cos(28.59°) × 1,674.4 km/h = 1,470.2 km/h.
The escape velocity required to pull free of Earth's gravitational field altogether and move into interplanetary space is about 11.2 km/s (40,300 km/h; 25,100 mph). [ 7 ] List of terms and concepts
Escape speed at a distance d from the center of a spherically symmetric primary body (such as a star or a planet) with mass M is given by the formula [2] [3] = = where: G is the universal gravitational constant (G ≈ 6.67×10 −11 m 3 ·kg −1 ·s −2)
where F g is the gravitational force acting between two objects, M E is the mass of the Earth, 5.9736 × 10 24 kg, m s is the mass of the satellite, r is the distance between the centers of their masses, and G is the gravitational constant, (6.674 28 ± 0.000 67) × 10 −11 m 3 kg −1 s −2.
Four huge asteroids — and a fifth that's much smaller — are passing Earth on Thursday in their closest approaches to the planet ever recorded. 4 large asteroids, including 1 the size of a ...
A parsec is the distance from the Sun to an astronomical object that has a parallax angle of one arcsecond (not to scale). The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to 3.26 light-years or 206,265 astronomical units (AU), i.e. 30.9 trillion kilometres (19.2 trillion miles).