Why things easily leave earths atmosphere but burn up while re-entering the same atmosphere
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The thing about space is, it’s easy to get there. Staying there is the hard part. To stay in orbit, you have to go very fast “sideways”. Spacecraft gain much of that speed while above the dense atmosphere. On reentry, objects descend back into the atmosphere without losing much speed (actually speeding up at first as they descend). Hitting air at such high speed compresses the air in front of the spacecraft, heating it to many thousands of degrees.
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