Eli5: How do satellites stay in orbit, and don’t gravity pull them to the surface?
In: Earth Science
In addition to the others, it might help to visualize that a low earth orbit satellite is not very high up. Look at [this graphic](https://i0.wp.com/www.cybera.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/orbit-1.jpeg?w=800&ssl=1). Relatively, they are barely skimming the Earth, just above the atmosphere to avoid drag, but they’re going about 17,000 mph. You see the videos of rockets going straight up, but they only go straight up long enough to get out of the thicker part of the atmosphere. Then they start going mostly sideways to accelerate the satellites up to that velocity before releasing them. If a rocket went straight up and dropped off a satellite, it would quickly fall back to Earth because it doesn’t have the sideways velocity to keep “missing” Earth as it was pulled in by gravity.
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