How to Use orbit in a Sentence

orbit

1 of 2 noun
  • The reason there are leap days, and years, is because of the Earth's orbit.
    Emily Deletter, USA TODAY, 29 Feb. 2024
  • The moon goes through its monthly orbit around the Earth, while Venus orbits the sun.
    The Arizona Republic, 8 Jan. 2024
  • This idea works well with satellites in low-Earth orbit.
    Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2023
  • Once launched, the Falcon 9 rocket will send the satellites to low-Earth orbit.
    Emily Deletter, USA TODAY, 1 Sep. 2023
  • Its orbit has been mapped and it isn't considered a threat.
    George Petras, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
  • What would happen to the thousands of new satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO)?
    Scientific American, 1 June 2023
  • The movement of the shadow across the land happens as the Earth's rotation interacts with the orbit of the moon.
    USA TODAY, 23 Mar. 2024
  • For its part, the United States has tried to pull Vietnam out of Russia’s orbit.
    Hannah Beech, New York Times, 9 Sep. 2023
  • Sadly, there are few people left in Musk’s orbit who can keep him in check.
    Byzoë Schiffer, Fortune, 19 Jan. 2024
  • The space plane has spent the equivalent of 10 years in orbit over seven missions.
    Christian Davenport, Washington Post, 9 Dec. 2023
  • The ones where all the parts swirl in a unique orbit, building upon each other and all of a sudden the whole thing is floating.
    Evan Minsker, Pitchfork, 29 Aug. 2023
  • The Starship depot will linger in low-Earth orbit as tankers arrive one by one.
    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 17 Nov. 2023
  • As the stars orbit and their expanding winds sweep outward, the dust spirals out like the jet from a lawn sprinkler.
    Peter Tuthill, Scientific American, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Most of the asteroids that the researchers identified are in the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, which is quite far from Earth.
    Conor Feehly, Discover Magazine, 12 July 2023
  • Like most of the teenagers in her orbit, Lisa longs to be with someone who can relate to her disdain for the drudgery of everyday life.
    Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge, 26 Oct. 2023
  • That happens because the moon moves around the Earth in an elliptical orbit.
    Robert Higgs, cleveland, 30 Aug. 2023
  • When the moon’s orbit brings it closer to Earth than usual, the cosmic combo is called a supermoon.
    Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 30 June 2023
  • The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has also announced plans for a network in low-Earth orbit.
    John Liu, New York Times, 14 Mar. 2024
  • The summer solstice occurs when the Earth reaches the point in its orbit when the North Pole is at its maximum tilt of about 23.5 degrees toward the Sun.
    Skyler Caruso, Peoplemag, 20 June 2023
  • However, the moon wasn’t at that particular point in its orbit at that time.
    Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Jan. 2024
  • The Old Farmer's Almanac explains that the moon's orbit is nearly parallel to the Earth's eastern horizon around this time.
    Megan Friedman, Country Living, 16 June 2023
  • The chaotic fall from orbit finally came to an end when the cargo pallet reentered on March 8 around 3:29 p.m.
    Passant Rabie / Gizmodo, Quartz, 16 Apr. 2024
  • That means the Earth was a young 100 million years old when an object about the size of Mars slammed into it, slinging magma out into Earth’s orbit.
    Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 24 Oct. 2023
  • Yet space tourists are still lining up, ever since the first one rocketed into orbit in 2001 with the Russians.
    Susan Montoya Bryan, Anchorage Daily News, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Now, Russia has announced its intention to leave the space station by 2028 and build its own station in orbit.
    Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Mar. 2024
  • Like a satellite picking up speed in orbit, the worm zoomed into hyperspace.
    Robert Sullivan, The New Yorker, 20 Nov. 2023
  • The rocket will then continue its course, with the spacecraft blasting about 100 million miles into orbit around the sun.
    Faith E. Pinho, Los Angeles Times, 3 Dec. 2023
  • Hanwha aims to make the small launcher, which can loft about 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, more price competitive.
    Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 26 May 2023
  • Weather satellites can track every movement of a storm from orbit.
    IEEE Spectrum, 23 Nov. 2023
  • The outermost planet, with a year lasting 282 days, is similar in orbit to Venus.
    Quanta Magazine, 20 Dec. 2023
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orbit

2 of 2 verb
  • The Moon orbits the Earth.
  • The Moon orbits around the Earth.
  • The satellites orbit at different heights.
  • The first will dock with Haven-1 for up to 30 days while orbiting the Earth.
    Alison Fox, Travel + Leisure, 15 May 2023
  • The pair of asteroids orbits the sun and doesn’t pose any threat to our planet.
    Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Feb. 2024
  • The super-Earth Kepler-69c orbits its sun in a galaxy far, far away.
    wsj.com, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Axiom plans to launch the first section of its space station to orbit in 2025.
    Tristan Bove, Fortune, 4 Feb. 2023
  • Quaoar is about 4 billion miles away from the sun and takes around 286 years to orbit it, and has a small moon called Weywot.
    Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY, 10 Feb. 2023
  • The sensors now orbiting in space will then send data back to Earth in the coming months.
    Julia Simon, NPR, 5 Mar. 2024
  • This mission is uncrewed, but the next will have people onboard to orbit the moon.
    Phil Plait, Scientific American, 30 Nov. 2022
  • Christie, in a gray wool suit and red floral tie, stood at the center of the room, slowly orbiting a wooden stool.
    Kara Voght, Washington Post, 12 July 2023
  • Such a satellite happened to orbit the Earth at an altitude of 507 km.
    Dhananjay Khadilkar, Ars Technica, 17 Nov. 2023
  • Across each one was a streak, the path of one of the 350 unknown objects currently orbiting Earth.
    Hari Kunzru, Harper's Magazine, 10 Oct. 2023
  • That flight would include four crew members who would dock with the station for as many as 30 days while orbiting the Earth.
    Julia Musto, Fox News, 12 May 2023
  • Solar eclipses occur because, as the Earth is orbiting the sun, the moon is orbiting the Earth.
    Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2024
  • The goal is to find a safe and effective way to pare down the ever-growing field of space junk orbiting our planet.
    Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 7 June 2023
  • What do tens of thousands of orbiting satellites mean for our skies—and for the new space industry that will launch them?
    Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 22 May 2023
  • There’s one other Wilcox, Bering, whose absence is the black hole around which her parents and siblings orbit.
    Hamilton Cain, Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2023
  • Now, astronomers think the cratered chunk of ice orbiting Saturn has a deep secret: a hidden ocean.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 10 Feb. 2024
  • These space rocks orbit the sun at the same distance as Jupiter in two clusters: one cluster races ahead of the gas giant while the other trails behind the planet.
    Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2023
  • How do these two black holes come together to orbit each other and collide?
    Swapna Krishna, WIRED, 1 Dec. 2023
  • If those cases put Merchan in the public eye, the last two years trained a Trump-orbiting telescope on his courtroom.
    Jennifer Peltz, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2023
  • Near-Earth objects are entities such as asteroids and comets that orbit the sun like the planets do.
    Mary Kekatos, ABC News, 12 June 2023
  • Because the moon orbits the Earth at an angle of about five degrees—rather than along a flat plane—the shadow is often cast above or below the moon’s orbit.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Jan. 2024
  • Everything depends on the apparent size of the star and the planet’s orbiting body.
    Adam Frank, The Atlantic, 1 Apr. 2024
  • While many asteroids reside in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, Bennu orbits the sun closer to Earth.
    Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Sep. 2023
  • Earth and Jupiter orbit the sun in very nearly the same plane, and Jupiter’s axis is tipped a mere three degrees from perpendicular.
    Phil Plait, Scientific American, 29 Dec. 2023
  • Its two companion planets, which orbit farther out, are both rocky planets, so all three may have formed the same way.
    Elizabeth Rayne, Ars Technica, 14 Oct. 2023
  • But what would life on Earth really be like if our planet was orbited by two moons instead of one?
    Matt Benoit, Discover Magazine, 1 Dec. 2023
  • The space station was orbiting 259 miles above the Pacific Ocean, according to the space agency.
    Julia Musto, Fox News, 17 Aug. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'orbit.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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