I kind of understand that it’s like falling but falling past Earth but not really. Does it require power (in the case of artificial satellites, obviously the moon doesn’t have power) or does orbit last basically forever. If two things in orbit collide will they fall? If Deimos and Phobos somehow crash into each other will they just fall to Mars?
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When you throw a ball or fire a bullet, gravity pulls it down in an arc or curve shape. You know what also has a curve? The earths surface. What if the 2 shapes were the same size, so that the falling object always fell down at the same rate that the curvature of the Earth fell away from it? Voila, you’re in orbit now. You’ll keep falling forever and never get any closer to the ground. If you do something to slow the object down, however, then those shapes wont match any more and you WILL get closer to the ground, likely hitting it. In theory you don’t need any power to maintain orbit, but in reality for things in low earth orbit there are very very minor amounts of molecules that will slowly bleed you of your speed if you are close to the atmosphere. If you are far enough away then the drag will be negligible and you will stay up there indefinitely.
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