Question

A trajectory of a spaceship traveling from Earth to Mars can be expressed as the equation where the sun is the origin and is expressed in million mi. Earth is 151.1 million mi. from the sun, and mars is 211.7 million mi. from the sun.
a. What type of polar graph does this equation represent?
b. How many radians around the sun does the spaceship travel?

Answer 1

The trajectory equation is r=28.93 theta

Answer 2

(a) this is a spiral
(b) r(5.223) = 151.1
r(7.318) = 211.7
So θ changed by 2.095