How do you calculate the gravitational attraction between the earth and something in Earth's orbit?
Example: Earth’s gravitational field is 7.97 N/kg at the altitude of the space shuttle. At this altitude what is the size of the force of attraction between a student with a mass of 42.5 kg and Earth?
You’ll need to know the earth’s mass, the distance between the center of the earth and the center of the object, and the universal gravitational constant. Then plug it into this formula
F = G(m1m2)/r^2
Where F is the force of attraction
G is that constant I spoke about above
m1 is your mass
m2 is the earth’s mass
and r is the distance from the center of the earth to your center.