Question

A spacecraft is flying toward the moon. The moon’s gravitational pull on the spacecraft will ___________.

Answer 1

it's A, if you are getting near the moom, the gravitational force is given by: \[F = \frac{GMm}{r^2}\], where r is teh distance of teh spacecraft and the center of the moon. You can see that if r decreases, F increases

Answer 2

-- A spacecraft is flying from Earth toward the moon.

-- The gravitational forces between the Earth and the spacecraft
are steadily decreasing.

-- The gravitational forces between the Moon and the spacecraft
are steadily increasing.


I did a calculation to see where the spacecraft would need
to be in order for the gravitational force pulling the spacecraft
toward the Earth and toward the Moon to be equal. I came out
with just about 90% of the distance to the Moon. That happens
because gravitational force depends on mass, and the Earth has
about 80 times as much mass as the Moon has.