Io, a satellite of Jupiter, has an orbital period of 1.77 days and an orbital radius of 4.22X105 km. From these data, how would you determine the mass of Jupiter?

1 Answer
Sep 27, 2017

Use Kepler's 3rd law.

Explanation:

It states that the orbital period, T is related to the distance, r as:

T2=G.M4πr3 where G is the universal gravitational constant (a very small number for reasons physicists still find hard to explain.)

Rearranging for M should give Jupiter's mass.