What happens if you drop an anvil from the space station

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]What happens if you drop an anvil from the space station? You push a 200-lb anvil out of the International Space Station and it doesn't fall straight down. It enters orbit. Everything at that altitude is moving at 17,500 mph to stay in orbit. So, when you release the anvil, it keeps that speed. It's now circling the Earth at the same velocity as the station, just a few feet away, floating alongside you like it's mocking gravity. But, orbits decay. Slowly, over weeks or months, atmospheric drag, even at that altitude where air is almost nonexistent, will pull it lower. The anvil starts losing speed. The orbit tightens. It drops closer to the planet.

[00:00:39]Eventually, it hits the upper atmosphere and things get violent. Friction heats the metal to thousands of degrees. The anvil becomes a meteor, glowing white-hot, trailing plasma. Most of it burns away before reaching the ground, but if any chunk survives, it slams into the surface at terminal velocity, punching a crater into whatever it hits, all because you got bored and pushed a blacksmith's tool out of an airlock 400 mi above Earth.