# If the moon also fall then why can the astronaut moonwalks?

imagine astronauts inside the ISS while everything are in free fall, the astronauts are floating around. Now if the moon are also in free fall then how come astronauts can perform moonwalk on the surface but not on ISS?

btw ISS stands for international space station.

• Think about what it's in free fall relative to in each case and which bodies of significant gravitational force are involved. Here's a hint, Earth is in free fall around the sun. How do you walk? Apr 10, 2018 at 1:54
• The mass of the moon is $7.3\times10^{23}$ kg. The mass of ISS is about $4.2\times10^6$ kg. Start doing some calculations with Newton's law of graviation and see where it leads you. Apr 10, 2018 at 1:55
• Also realize that the earth is in free fall around the sun. Aug 5, 2021 at 11:47

The astronauts on ISS are attracted to the space station, just as they are attracted to the Moon and to the Earth which are also in free fall. However, the mass of ISS is so very much smaller than the mass of the Moon, by many orders of magnitude (as Photon says, $4.2 \times 10^6kg$ compared with $7.3 \times 10^{23} kg$), so the gravitational pull of ISS is many orders of magnitude less.