I imagine that sometimes things that are put into orbit and intended to stay there sometimes overshoot their mark and the earth just flies by leaving whatever it was in deep space.
Or maybe that never happens?
In: Technology
Never happens. Takes a lot of energy or deltaV to leave earths orbit. Think about it. You gotta go out pass the moon to leave earths orbit. The moon is in earths orbit.
Things in orbit do get orbital decay. They slow down a little over time due to hitting particles and radiation in space, need little boosts here and there to stay in the correct orbits.
But one time they did lose a 100 million dollar probe to Mars cuz a bunch of really smart people forgot to convert metric to imperial.
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