[Physics] How are orbits made stable

dragnewtonian-gravityorbital-motionsatellitesstability

I understand the concept of object staying in some orbit due to centrifugal force and gravity.

However I do not understand how is orbit of a body like satellite or planet has perfect balance between gravitational pull and centrifugal force of revolution?

because if the angular velocity is even a little bit more than required then the object will move away and gravitational pull will reduce with square of distance and so centripetal force will decrease leading the object to stray further.

so is everything in orbit is either slowly moving away or falling in?

or is it that only those bodies whose orbital velocity is just perfect stays in orbit with everything else spiraling in or out of it?

so are satellites put with very accurately calculated velocity to prevent them from falling in or moving away or somehow it balances itself?

Best Answer

First of all you should note that the orbit of such a satellite is stable orbit which means if you deviate it from the exact value of $r=r_0$ by small amount it will not go away and fall to the earth rather it will have a radial simple harmonic motion about $r=r_0$.This is because $r=r_0$ corresponds to the minimum of effective potential in which the satellite is bound.

This can be shown mathematically in following way.Let deviate it from $r=r_0$ by small amount so that the energy is given by $$E=\frac{1}{2}m\dot{r}^2+\frac{1}{2}mr^2\dot\theta^2-\frac{GMm}{r}=\frac{1}{2}m\dot{r}^2+\frac{L^2}{2mr^2}-\frac{K}{r}=\frac{1}{2}m\dot{r}^2+V_{eff}$$

If you expand $V_{eff}(r)$ about the minimum that is $r=r_0=\frac{L^2}{Km}$ you will get $$V_{eff}(r)=V_{eff}{(r_0)}+\frac{1}{2}k(r-r_0)^2_....$$

Where $k=V_{eff}''(r_0)=\frac{K^4m^3}{L^6}$.So the radial motion will be a simple harmonic oscillation about $r=r_0$ with frequency $$\omega=\sqrt{\frac{k}{m}}=\frac{mK^2}{L^3}$$

This will more clear if you just just try to plot $V_{eff}(r)$ vs $r$. About $r=r_0$ where $V_{eff}$ is minimum the potential can be approximated as that of simple harmonic oscillator for $r\sim r_0$.

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