A Manned Space Mission to Saturn Sometime in the Future

Multiple Choice

A manned space mission to Saturn sometime in the future might place an observer in a spacecraft within its ring system.What relationship between the motions of the ring particles and the motion of the spacecraft would the observer see?

A) All particles would be moving with the same orbital speed and would fly in formation with the spacecraft because the motions of particles and spacecraft are governed by gravity.
B) Particles closer to the planet would overtake the spacecraft, while particles farther from the planet would be overtaken by the spacecraft, following Kepler's laws.
C) The particles would be moving in ellipses and would therefore sometimes move ahead of the spacecraft and at other times fall behind the spacecraft, even colliding with it occasionally.
D) Particles orbiting farther from the planet would be traveling faster and would overtake the spacecraft, while particles closer to the planet would be moving slower and would be overtaken by the spacecraft.