List of Escape Velocities
Location | with respect to | Ve | Location | with respect to | Ve | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
on the Sun, | the Sun's gravity: | 617.5 km/s | ||||
on Mercury, | Mercury's gravity: | 4.3 km/s | at Mercury, | the Sun's gravity: | 67.7 km/s | |
on Venus, | Venus' gravity: | 10.3 km/s | at Venus, | the Sun's gravity: | 49.5 km/s | |
on Earth, | the Earth's gravity: | 11.2 km/s | at the Earth/Moon, | the Sun's gravity: | 42.1 km/s | |
on the Moon, | the Moon's gravity: | 2.4 km/s | at the Moon, | the Earth's gravity: | 1.4 km/s | |
on Mars, | Mars' gravity: | 5.0 km/s | at Mars, | the Sun's gravity: | 34.1 km/s | |
on Jupiter, | Jupiter's gravity: | 59.5 km/s | at Jupiter, | the Sun's gravity: | 18.5 km/s | |
on Ganymede, | Ganymede's gravity: | 2.7 km/s | ||||
on Saturn, | Saturn's gravity: | 35.6 km/s | at Saturn, | the Sun's gravity: | 13.6 km/s | |
on Uranus, | Uranus' gravity: | 21.2 km/s | at Uranus, | the Sun's gravity: | 9.6 km/s | |
on Neptune, | Neptune's gravity: | 23.6 km/s | at Neptune, | the Sun's gravity: | 7.7 km/s | |
on Pluto, | Pluto's gravity: | 1.2 km/s | ||||
in the Solar System, | the Milky Way's gravity: | ≥ 525 km/s | ||||
on the event horizon, | a black hole's gravity: | = 299,792 km/s |
Because of the atmosphere it is not useful and hardly possible to give an object near the surface of the Earth a speed of 11.2 km/s (40,320 km/h), as these speeds are too far in the hypersonic regime for most practical propulsion systems and would cause most objects to burn up due to aerodynamic heating or be torn apart by atmospheric drag. For an actual escape orbit a spacecraft is first placed in low Earth orbit (160–2,000 km) and then accelerated to the escape velocity at that altitude, which is a little less — about 10.9 km/s. The required change in speed, however, is far less because from a low Earth orbit the spacecraft already has a speed of approximately 8 km/s (28,800 km/h).
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