• Question: how far does the moon travel in 1 hour?

    Asked by lupopippa to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 25 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi lupopippa,
      I didn’t know this either, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently, the average orbital speed is about 1 kilometer per second. This means that in an hour, the moon would travel about 3600 kilometers. Which is pretty quick really!

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi lupopippa,

      I thought I’d try and work this out and this is my working:

      The average distance of the moon from the Earth is: 384,400 Km. (according to a google search)

      Assuming the Moon orbits in a perfect circle around the Earth, that circumference would be 2πr were r is the radius (the distance from Earth to Moon as the Earth is the centre of this circle)

      2 x π x 384400 = 2,415,256.4

      So the distance travelled in 1 orbit is 2,415,256.4 Km

      Each orbit lasts 28 days, which is 672 hours,

      So if we divide the distance by the number of hours we get the distance travelled which is:

      3594.13 km per hour, so more or less on about what James V estimated.

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