4.II.11A
Part IA, 2001
A spacecraft of mass moves under the gravitational influence of the Sun of mass and with universal gravitation constant . After a disastrous manoeuvre, the unfortunate spacecraft finds itself exactly in a parabolic orbit about the Sun: the orbit with zero total energy. Using the conservation of energy and angular momentum, or otherwise, show that in the subsequent motion the distance of the spacecraft from the Sun satisfies
with constants and .