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ZealousIdealBat-0 t1_j24miqk wrote

Short answer: No. This is because at the surface of the moon the moon’s gravity is stronger than the earth’s gravity.

Long answer: Newton’s law of gravity says that the force of gravity between two object decreases as the distance between them increases. The moon’s surface gravity causes an acceleration towards the moon at 1.62 m/s^2. The earth’s gravity, on the surface of the moon, causes an acceleration of approximately 0.003 m/s^2 towards the earth. So, not negligible, but also not enough to cause an object to fall towards the earth. In order for the earth’s gravity and the moon’s gravity to be equal to each other, you must be about 10% of the way from the moon to the earth, or about 38,000 km from the surface of the moon. This point is called a “Lagrange point”, where gravitational forces are cancelled out to create a point of equilibrium. This Lagrange point is like balancing a pencil on your finger; one small push towards the earth causes the object to fall towards the earth, but a small push towards the moon causes the object to fall towards the moon. I hope this helps!

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Triassic_Bark t1_j24q7gn wrote

That was a great explanation of why Lagrange points exist!

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HolyGhostin t1_j24uw1g wrote

And for op's question, if you launch something straight "up" at earth enough to get out of the moon's gravity and into earth's, it then just falls "down" to earth without orbit. If you look up at earth and launch something 90 degrees "ahead" of the moon, it would escape into an orbit around earth. Maybe not a stable orbit, I'm not smart enough to figure that out.

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