If you were in a spacecraft moving at 1000 miles/hour in outer space and you turned off the engines, what would happen to the speed and direction of your spacecraft & why?

Question

If you were in a spacecraft moving at 1000 miles/hour in outer space and you turned off the engines, what would happen to the speed and direction of your spacecraft & why?

In: 13

Answer 1

If a spacecraft has no engines running, the path is totally controlled by gravity.

So it depends where it is, what direction it is travelling, and how fast.

It could be in a very distant orbit of the earth at about 1 million kilometers. It could be in a solar orbit. It could be on a trajectory from the earth to the moon, or from the earth to mars.