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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
"Free falling" means an object is not being affected by any other forces besides gravity. When an object is in motion, it will move with constant speed in a straight line unless it is acted on by a force. In space, objects "want" to go straight, but the gravity of nearby objects can pull them away from a straight path.
That exact path depends on the strength of the gravity and the velocity of the object. In space, that path can go a very long distance before an object crashes into something. Sometimes the path loops around a planet or star many times, and we call that an orbit. On a bigger scale, objects like stars and galaxies can move in any direction, and when objects get close together their paths will be curved by their mutual gravitational attraction, then they will keep flying away on their new paths.
tl:dr - In space, things fall in different directions because there are many sources of gravity pulling in different directions.
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