Video narration
Why doesn't the Sun's pull make the planets crash into it? A thrown ball offers a clue: Earth pulls it down as its forward motion carries it onward, so its path bends. But a planet isn't just a ball tossed around the Sun. That comparison is only a starting point, not a full model. The planets are not escaping the Sun's pull. Their sideways motion makes their fall curve around it. As they move forward, the Sun's gravity continually bends their paths, turning straight-ahead travel into an orbit: a route around the Sun, not a fixed track laid through space. And the solar system is larger than those circling worlds. Moons travel around planets; dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets are part of the same family, all moving under gravity. The Sun pulls them inward, but their sideways speed carries them around it, not into it.