Eli5: if on space Newtown law says that for every action there is an equal reaction, people moving through the ISS will eventualy make it go out of orbit?

Question

They are moving themselves by pulling on the rods, won’t that make the ISS move very little, but after a ton of movement and a ton of time, won’t it move closer or farther from the orbit and collide with earth or drift through space?

In: Physics

Answer 1

When supply ships dock with the ISS they also use this opportunity to boost the station’s orbit using the docked ship’s thrusters.

While the Earth’s atmosphere is *practically* non-existent at 255 miles up, it’s not *literally* non-existent – there’s a slight atmospheric drag on the station at all times that slowly decays its orbit.

The astronauts do slightly change the station’s momentum when they kick off a surface, but they change it back when they hit another surface and it mostly balances out. The atmospheric drag effect is much more significant than anything the crew could do.