The way that objects orbit around the Earth depend on nothing but the orbited body's gravity and the speed at which the satellite orbits it.
The famous thought experiment by Newton was that he imagined a cannonball on top of a very high cliff being fired straight.
The famous thought experiment by Newton was that he imagined a cannonball on top of a very high cliff being fired straight.
If the speed is too slow then the object will simply travel straight and fall. If it's too fast, it will travel away from earth. Somewhere in the middle, there is a balance between the object flying away from earth and being pulled back such that it never actually hits earth and is in a constant fall; it is in orbit!
To understand this better consider the image of earth above and the following thought experiment:
From where the cannon is, imagine that every 10 metres it goes horizontally forward, it moves down 5 metres (as a result of curvature)
Now imagine that it takes 1 second to fall 5 metres on it. What if a cannon ball was fired forward at 10 m/s (metres per second) ? It would cover 10 metres in 1 second, but every 10 metres you fall 5 metres, BUT it takes 1 second to fall 5 metres
Can you guess what would be happening?
It would continue to cover the distance it takes to fall before it can hit the ground, thus it would continue to move at that same speed until something stopped, so it would continue to go around and around; it would be in orbit!
This is a simplified example, but you get the logic.
Note that this applies to anything else orbiting anything, eg the Earth around the Sun.