A NASA spacecraft once landed on the surface of the asteroid named 433 Eros.This asteroid is near Earth and has an average orbital speed of 24.36 kilometers per second. What is its speed in meters per second?

Question

0.02436 meters per second
0.2436 meters per hour
2,460 meters per hour
24,360 meters per second

Answer 1

To convert the average orbital speed of the asteroid 433 Eros from kilometers per second to meters per second, you need to multiply by 1,000 (since there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer).

So, $24.36,\text{km/s}$ is converted to:

$$24.36,\text{km/s}\times 1,000,\text{m/km}=24,360,\text{m/s}$$

Therefore, the speed of 433 Eros in meters per second is 24,360 meters per second.