[gpm]

Things like the moon will perturb it - orbits assume a 2-body system when we are strictly speaking in a (chaotic) n-body system.

Over millions of years that will add up, honestly I'm hoping someone else will do the math/research and figure out if they add up to enough that they wouldn't still be orbiting earth.

[ianai]

That’s my point though. The moon hasn’t degraded and crashed into the earth so it’s clearly possible for a satellite to orbit the earth indefinitely - for some suitable definition of indefinite.

[scottie_m]

The moon’s orbit is taking it further from Earth over time, it it’s very far away and very massive, as well as being influenced by the Sun. A satellite’s mass is almost negligible, and compared to the Earth-Moon distance it’s distance from Earth is too. A pebble hitting the moon also isn’t going to do much to change its course, while the same pebble will do a lot more to a satellite. The same is true of dust.

[stouset]

The moon has a ton of mass and—therefore—inertia. The chaotic effects of the system are still present, but require dramatically larger timescales to notice any kind of effect.

[gpm]

The moon's stability is a good point, but not conclusive. The moon's orbit isn't perturbed by it's own gravity. It's also much larger, so much more mass (radius cubed)/surface area (radius squared), so less affected by solar wind, micro meteor impacts, and the like.

[pxi]

But still, it's more likely we'd find evidence of a distant past civilisation on the moon than on earth right?