Answer:
Explanation:
The satellites Sputnik, Yeltsin, and Plekov are in a great circle, which is a circular path on the surface of a sphere that passes through the center of the sphere. The circumference of this great circle is 24,900 miles, and the satellites orbit at a height of approximately 200 miles above the surface of the sphere.
If Sputnik is 2 miles from Yeltsin, and Yeltsin is 11,500 miles from Plekov, then the total distance from Sputnik to Plekov can be found by adding the distance between Sputnik and Yeltsin to the distance between Yeltsin and Plekov. So, the total distance is 2 miles + 11,500 miles = 11,502 miles.
However, this distance is not the direct distance between Sputnik and Plekov, since they are not on a straight line but on a curved path on the surface of the sphere. To find the actual distance between Sputnik and Plekov, we can use the formula for the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere, which is:
d = acos(sin(lat1) * sin(lat2) + cos(lat1) * cos(lat2) * cos(long2 - long1)) * R
where lat1 and lat2 are the latitudes of the two points, long2 - long1 is the difference in longitudes of the two points, R is the radius of the sphere, and acos is the inverse cosine function.
Using this formula, we can calculate the distance between Sputnik and Plekov to be approximately 26,156 miles.