(a) Give 3 properties of a regular satellite:
(b) Provide an example of a regular satellite:
(c) Provide an example of an irregular satellite:
(d) What is inferred about the origin of a satellite from the regularity/irregularity of its orbit?
(e) Suppose we find a moon orbiting around a planet at a distance of 100,000 km, and a student says: "Perhaps this moon was originally an asteroid orbiting the Sun, and it just happened to drift close to the planet until it as only 100,000 km away from it, where it was caught by the planet's gravity, and it has been orbiting here ever since." Using the law of conservation of energy, explain why this scenario is physically impossible, and why a capture process must be more complicated than this. Please ignore the effect of the Sun's graity in your analysis. It is irrelevant.