At a certain instant, the earth, the moon, and a stationary 1040kg spacecraft li

Question

At a certain instant, the earth, the moon, and a stationary 1040kg spacecraft lie at the verticies of an equilateral triangle whose sides are 3.84x 10^5 km in length.

C) What is the minimum amount of work that you would have to do to move the spacecraft to a point far from the earth and moon? You can ignore any gravitational effects due to the other planets or the sun.

Hint..they asked us in part A to find magnitude of net force and the angle of the direction of the net force, so not sure if that is a needed step to solve the above question. I got both incorrect so I do not have answers to post

Explanation / Answer

The minimum amount of work done required will be:

W(min) = G m / R [ M(earth) + M(moon) ]

W(min) = 6.67 x 10^-11 x 1040 / (3.84 x 10^8 ) [ 5.97 x 10^24 + 7.35 x 10^22 ] = 1.09 x 10^9 J

Hence, W(min) = 1.09 x 10^9 J

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