The movements of the planets in the Solar System are pretty difficult to get your head around, even before we get started on ...

Gravity, or gravitational attraction ... backward with respect to their normal orbits. This offended some astronomers' sense of cosmos, the orderliness of the universe. In a universe perfectly ordered ...

Scientists are using laser-based tracking and gravity data to improve how we monitor both satellites and space debris. By blending these methods, they can now predict orbits more precisely and gather ...

This means that the closer the two objects are to each other, the stronger the force of gravity between them ... This means that objects in small orbits travel faster than objects in large ...

Gravity provides the force needed to maintain ... This means that objects in small orbits travel faster than objects in large orbits. The graph shows how the orbital speed of a planet changes ...

That explains why we feel a downwards pull towards Earth and why Earth orbits the sun. Although gravity is dominant over large cosmic scales and near very large masses like planets or stars ...

More accurate orbit predictions for satellites and space debris as well as a better understanding of the water masses present on Earth: Researchers at achieved both using satellite laser ranging.

However, the long-wavelength of the gravity field, which covers masses ... map them with SLR and predict their future orbits very precisely, which contributes to more safety in orbit." ...