
Topic: Gravity
Concepts: Circular orbits, Conservation of angular momentum, Elliptical orbits
Solution:
By conservation of angular momentum, each satellite has the same angular momentum at any point along its orbit. Thus, we can shift point A to coincide with the apogee of the ellipse and point C to coincide with the perigee of the ellipse.

Recall the velocity of a circular orbit is
The angular momentum is then
Since , we have . At the apogee, the velocity of satellite is smaller than the velocity of satellite since the ellipse is contained in the circle. Thus, we have . Similarly, we find at the perigee since the ellipse contains the circle. Thus, . Finally, we obtain so the answer is A.

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