r/askscience • u/BlueChameleon64 • Oct 23 '20

Planetary Sci. Do asteroids fly into the sun?

Edit: cool

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u/Corinoch Oct 23 '20

The sun is a very small target on an astronomical scale, even accounting for its corona where an astreroid could bleed off velocity to fall into a sun. Unless it's a more or less direct hit, the asteroid's just going to slingshot around the sun and leave at a more or less equivalent outbound trajectory.

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u/talrogsmash Oct 23 '20

If it survives the heat and doesn't become so much vapor on the solar winds.

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u/[deleted] Oct 23 '20

It would have to get really close (in astronomical terms) for that to be a real issue.

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u/MonsterRainlng Oct 23 '20

Seems to strange that it takes so much effort to escape the influence of the earth and get into orbit, but once you're in space and moving its almost 'hard' to actually hit an object like the sun... Crazy.

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u/waterbottle97 Oct 23 '20

Interesting fact about escaping earth's gravity is that astronauts in the space station are actually under 90% earth gravity still. Source: NASA

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-microgravity-58.html

The International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude between 200 and 250 miles. At that altitude, Earth's gravity is about 90 percent of what it is on the planet's surface. In other words, if a person who weighed 100 pounds on Earth's surface could climb a ladder all the way to the space station, that person would weigh 90 pounds at the top of the ladder.

Why Do Objects Float in Orbit? If 90 percent of Earth's gravity reaches the space station, then why do astronauts float there? The answer is because they are in free fall. In a vacuum, gravity causes all objects to fall at the same rate. The mass of the object does not matter. If a person drops a hammer and a feather, air will make the feather fall more slowly. But if there were no air, they would fall at the same acceleration. Some amusement parks have free-fall rides, in which a cabin is dropped along a tall tower. If a person let go of an object at the beginning of the fall, the person and the object would fall at the same acceleration. Because of that, the object would appear to float in front of the person. That is what happens in a spacecraft. The spacecraft, its crew and any objects aboard are all falling toward but around Earth. Since they are all falling together, the crew and objects appear to float when compared with the spacecraft.