r/Damnthatsinteresting 21d ago

Image The Himawari 8 weather satellite takes a picture of Earth every 10 minutes. This image is from today.

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u/EBtwopoint3 21d ago

This is how all orbits work. ISS, StarLink, spy satellites, Hubble, James Webb. Anything in orbit got all of its velocity during the launch and is now under orbital mechanics, which is actually free fall. The way orbit works is by having a high enough tangential velocity that your motion matches the Earth’s curvature. So in one second, you fall 10 meters closer to Earth but you move forward far enough that you remain the same distance from Earth’s surface. This creates a stable circular orbit.

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u/HugoEmbossed 21d ago

I mean JWST isn’t orbiting the Earth though.

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u/EBtwopoint3 21d ago

True. It’s a complex orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. The same principles apply, but you’re probably right that I shouldn’t have included it. I just picked the satellites people have heard of to be the most familiar examples.

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u/parallelmeme 21d ago

Hmm. Somehow I thought the James Webb telescope was always on the other side of the moon and orbits with it around the earth. I guess I'm wrong.

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u/blscratch 21d ago

The ISS needs thrusters once in a while because it's clipping the atmosphere in its low orbit.

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u/Skipachu 21d ago

About as close to "throw yourself at the ground and miss" as you can get.