How does an object stay in free fall without hitting the ground?

Free fall means gravity is pulling an object and no other force, such as a support force, is holding it up. A dropped apple is in free fall until it hits the ground, and a spacecraft in orbit is also in free fall the whole time. The difference is that the spacecraft has enough sideways speed to keep missing Earth as it falls. This idea is what makes orbit possible and explains the sensation of weightlessness inside a spacecraft. The physics was developed from Newton’s laws and later used to understand orbital motion more precisely.