A spacecraft is far away from the Earth and is near another planet, the force of gravity acting on it is zero.

Question

When a spacecraft is far away from the Earth and is near another planet, the force of gravity acting on the spacecraft is zero. Is it true? Why?

Answer 1

earth is not the only planet with gravity you know.

if its outside the gravitational field then yes.
if its in orbit then it will have a gravitational force acting on it, just enough for it not to drift off into space.

go watch some sc fi movies.

:P

Answer 2

No, there is never going to be an instance where there is no gravitational force acting on an object. The reason for this is that the force of gravity has no limit of distance. Sir Isaac Newton was the first scientist to discover gravity and it's force of attraction between all matter. All matter attracts other matter due to the fact that matter has the tendancy to bend the four dimensional space/time that it occupies, this is described in Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Now the effects of gravity diminish over distances, so the gravitational force of attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. That means that if you double the distance between two objects the gravitational force will drop by a factor of 4, because 2 squared equals 4. Lets say that we moved the Earth 10 times farther from the sun than it is now. The result would be that the gravitational attraction between the two would be 100 times less than before the move.
You may have seen astronauts floating in "zero gravity" in orbit. This is usually referred to as micro-gravity. The astronauts are actually still under the influence of gravity, but they are essentially in a constant free fall. Sky divers experience the feeling of weightlessness while they free fall to earth. The astronauts are experiencing a similar phenomenon, however they are high above the atmosphere and also moving laterally in comparison to the earth. This balance of centrifigal fling out mixed with the gravitational pull is known as orbit.
So as you can see, the force of gravity is always acting on you, no matter where you are, but the force can be diminished with distance and also counter-acted with inertial forces. Hopefully this explanation is what you were looking for.

Answer 3

The force of gravity acting on the spaceship will be dependent on the size (mass) of the planet, its density, and the distance from the ship. Gravity from other space objects may also exert some force on the ship if they are close enough.

Answer 4

No, it is attracted by the mass of that planet, which deforms the local spacetime, resulting in what we call it's gravity. Part way between planets (or a planet and moon, or star), there may be so miniscule a gravitational attraction as to be effectively unmeasureable.

Answer 5

No it's not true. It is possible for an object to intersect two gravitational fields at the right spot where it would become trapped between two equal gravitational pulls. This would make the object stationary but the gravitational pull is not zero. There are two equal pulls which cancel each other out.

Answer 6

First, the attraction between 2 bodies is never zero.

So what you might be referring to is when the attraction by one body is equal and opposite from the second body.