Crowded Space The annual number of worldwide commercial space launches can be modele...

Crowded Space The annual number of worldwide commercial space launches can be modeled as

where output is measured in launches and t represents the number of years since 2000, data from 2 ≤ t ≤ 8.

(Source: Based on data from Bureau of Transportation Statistics)

a. How many commercial launches took place in 2008?

b. Numerically estimate, to the nearest integer, the rate of change of the number of launches at the end of 2008.