How do satellites not fall back to Earth due to gravity if they are not traveling at escape velocity?

Question

How do satellites not fall back to Earth due to gravity if they are not traveling at escape velocity?

In: Physics

Answer 1

There’s three sets of velocity that matter: suborbital velocity, orbital velocity, and escape velocity.

Anything going at suborbital velocity is going to come back to earth. Anything going higher than suborbital, but less than escape, is going to keep circling the earth almost forever. (Or at least until something slows it back down to suborbital velocity.) Anything going higher than orbital velocity is going at escape velocity, and isn’t sticking around.

If you want a more intuitive understanding of this, download the game ‘Kerbal Space Program’ and play around.