During an experiment, a signal from a spaceship reached the ground station in five minutes. What was the distance of the spaceship from the ground station ? The signal travels at the speed of light, that is, 3 × 108 ms-1.
Here we have,
time, t = 5 minutes = 300 s,
Speed with which the signal is travelling, v = 3 × 108 ms-1
Now, using the formula, we get
Distance of spaceship, s = vt
= 3 × 108 × 300
= 9 × 1010 m.