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Does all of the space debris eventually degrade in orbit enough to reenter the atmosphere? I'm a little confused as to why/how debris stays aloft without any boost.
Newton's First Law of Motion -- "An object will retain it's state (in motion or at rest) without external input of energy." If you place an object into an orbit, it will remain in that orbit forever with no further "boost" required unless something saps its energy, such as acceleration from opposing gravitational pulls or, with lower orbits, atmospheric drag. If the earth orbit is high enough there is no significant atmospheric drag. If the orbit is lunar or heliocentric the object could orbit for a very long time before gravitational perturbances affected its orbit. Snoopy, the Apollo 10 Lunar Module, is somewhere out there orbiting the Sun since the late 1960's.
The thing is just that space around earth really isnt a complete vacuum. The remaining particles slow down sattelites depending on how close they are to earth. LEO ones only have a lifespan of maybe a few hundred years (not sure about that) while the ones in geostationary orbits much farther away are estimated to last billions of years until they crash down to earth.
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[–] ot_to_know ago
Does all of the space debris eventually degrade in orbit enough to reenter the atmosphere? I'm a little confused as to why/how debris stays aloft without any boost.
[–] TrevorLahey 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Newton's First Law of Motion -- "An object will retain it's state (in motion or at rest) without external input of energy." If you place an object into an orbit, it will remain in that orbit forever with no further "boost" required unless something saps its energy, such as acceleration from opposing gravitational pulls or, with lower orbits, atmospheric drag. If the earth orbit is high enough there is no significant atmospheric drag. If the orbit is lunar or heliocentric the object could orbit for a very long time before gravitational perturbances affected its orbit. Snoopy, the Apollo 10 Lunar Module, is somewhere out there orbiting the Sun since the late 1960's.
[–] CarlosShyamalan 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The thing is just that space around earth really isnt a complete vacuum. The remaining particles slow down sattelites depending on how close they are to earth. LEO ones only have a lifespan of maybe a few hundred years (not sure about that) while the ones in geostationary orbits much farther away are estimated to last billions of years until they crash down to earth.
[–] ot_to_know 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Thank you for the explanation!
Edit: and you made me go lookup Snoopy!
[–] klobos ago
If you are into gaming at all, Kerbal Space Program will teach you all about orbital mechanics better then any entry level physics class will.