Newton's cannonball

5–8),[2] Newton visualizes a stone being projected from the top of a high mountain, and that "that there is no air about the earth, or at least that it is endowed with little or no power of resisting".

As a gravitational force acts on the projectile, it will follow a different path depending on its initial velocity.

If the speed is very high, it will leave Earth in a parabolic (at exactly escape velocity) or hyperbolic trajectory.

Newton's original plan for Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was that it should consist of two books, the first analyzing basic laws of motion, and the second applying them to the Solar System.

[3][4] However, manuscripts of an earlier draft of this last book survived, and a version of it was published in 1728 as De mundi systemate; an English translation was also published earlier in 1728 under the name A Treatise of the System of the World.

A cannon on top of a very high mountain shoots a cannonball horizontally. If the speed is low, the cannonball quickly falls back to Earth (A, B). At intermediate speeds , it will revolve around Earth along an elliptical orbit (C, D). Beyond the escape velocity , it will leave the Earth without returning (E).
A photograph of page 6 from Newton's De mundi systemate ( A Treatise of the System of the World ), as it appears on the Voyager Golden Record