The Mars orbiter for the Viking mission was designed to make one complete trip around th...

The Mars orbiter for the Viking mission was designed to make one complete trip around the planet in exactly the same time that it takes Mars to revolve once about its own axis. This time is 24 h, 37 min, 23 s. In this way, it is possible for the orbiter to pass over the landing site of the lander capsule at the same time in each Martian day at the orbiter’s minimum (periapsis) altitude. For the Viking I mission, the periapsis altitude of the orbiter was 1508 km. Make use of the data in Table D/2 in Appendix D and compute the maximum (apoapsis) altitude h_a for the orbiter in its elliptical path.