> before they get pulled back into the atmosphere by gravity.
Irrelevant to the point, but: It's more that they get pulled further down into atmosphere by... atmosphere. With just gravity alone, they'd stay perfectly in orbit.
Irrelevant to the point, but: It's more that they get pulled further down into atmosphere by... atmosphere. With just gravity alone, they'd stay perfectly in orbit.
Not quite true. For example quite a few orbits around the moon are unstable and you will end up crashing into the surface. This is due to essentially all celestial objects not being spherical.