- #1
wizzart
- 25
- 0
Geez it's been ages since I last was here. Anyway, I was thinking a little on the subject below and remembered this place. It's probably ridiculously trivial, but still I wonder:
A satellite stays in orbit around the Earth because it's falling at the same pace as the Earth's surface curves, simply put. But that's a sattelite in stationary orbit. What happens if I release a sattelite in an orbit that's to high for it's speed? My guess: it falls back to Earth and because it's angular momentum needs to be preserved it gradually picks up more tangential speed until it lands into a stationary orbit, which would be somewhere between the orbit where it should've been and where it was released...
Correct or rubbish?
A satellite stays in orbit around the Earth because it's falling at the same pace as the Earth's surface curves, simply put. But that's a sattelite in stationary orbit. What happens if I release a sattelite in an orbit that's to high for it's speed? My guess: it falls back to Earth and because it's angular momentum needs to be preserved it gradually picks up more tangential speed until it lands into a stationary orbit, which would be somewhere between the orbit where it should've been and where it was released...
Correct or rubbish?