Explain why a satellite moves around the earth without any force pushing it.?

Answer 1

An object in motion will stay in motion—unless something pushes or pulls on it. This is Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion. It is sometimes referred to as the Law of Inertia:

Force = Mass * Acceleration

Without gravity, an Earth-orbiting satellite would go off into space, along a straight line. With gravity, it is pulled back toward the Earth. There is a continuous tug-of-war between the one object's tendency to move in a straight line— sometimes thought of as its momentum—and the tug of gravity pulling it back.

A satellite's momentum and the force of gravity have to be balanced in order for an orbit to happen. If the forward momentum of the satelliteis too great, it will speed past the earth, and not enter into orbit. If momentum is too small, the satellite will be pulled into the earth completely and crash. You can think of it as the satellite's constantly falling into the planet Earth, but because it's moving sideways (horizontally) fast enough, it never hits.

Answer 2

Actually a Satellite requires a lot of speed (velocity) to orbit the earth. So actually to maintain this velocity there must be forces pushing it. The original force that pushes it is the force from its launch and can last a long time on the inertia from this launch.

This inertia makes it go away from the earth in a straight line, but gravity pulls it back towards earth. This causes the Satellite to orbit the earth.

Unlike the moon that still orbits under its original momentum. Man made Satellites are close enough to the earth to experience a little bit of drag from the small amount of atmosphere that are out there. So they have thrusters that must be fired from time to time to overcome this factor.

Answer 3

The satalite is fired from earth and is moving at a certain rate of speed. If the earth wasnt nearby the satelite would travel in a straight line until another force acted on it. Because the earths gravity is attempting to pull it inward it cause the satelite path to be an arc. Think of a ball on a string. the ball is forced to move in an arch, if that string were to break the ball would fly off in a straight line

Answer 4

A satellite moves in an orbit around the Earth. We say that an object in orbit is falling around the more massive object. Orbits are possible because of gravity.

Answer 5

The Law of Inertia...
Objects in Motion tend to stay in motion - unless something slows them down.

On Earth, objects traveling at speed must push through the air in the atmosphere. This obstacle is not present in Space, so the satellite may continue moving right along with no hinderance.

Answer 6

A satellite in space is, literally, falling to the Earth.

Imagine you throw a ball precisely fast and hard enough that its falling curve EXACTLY matches the curve of the horizon -- ideally it would never fall, always being five feet or whatever above the ground, and eventually go around the world and hit you in the back of the head.

Of course, atmosphere would eventually drag it down. But satellites hundreds of miles up are in vacuum.

So, satellites are literally in "free fall", just pushed into place by their rocket to be fast enough that they don't fall, or fly out into space.

Answer 7

It doesnt rotate around sun! But it is continiously trying to fall on the earth. Confused?
ok. Suppose you throw a stone from the mt Averest (youlet it to fall it freely downwards), then of course it falls,
now if you throw it with some force perpendiculer to your body it fall some what far to you on the earth, now if you applied more force(by any means) it may happen that it fall in the other city!
Now if you applied the force which is applied on the satellite it continiously try to fall on the earth, but it cant due to its velocity, and because there is no environment in space, no air friction is there.
And thats all.
Hope understood.

Answer 8

The satellite is still under the gravitational influence of the Earth which makes it move in orbits..

Answer 9

If you drop something it falls to the ground.
If you give it a horizontal push it falls in an arc to the ground.
If you push it fast enough as the entity falls to the ground the earth curves away from the fall such that the the falling body follows the curvature,so it never approached the ground,it is in orbit
It there is nothing to slow it down it will stay in orbit.

Answer 10

The satellite got moment of inertia due to initial movement of launching rocket and that will not vanished because there isn't any friction or any gravitational sources around it to afect it's movement.
of course there is some small servo motor to adjust it's orbit angle.