The Ewoks are dead. All of them. ‘What happens to Endor after the destruction of the second Death Star? To figure this problem out, we have to work out the orbital dynamics of this system. The Wookiepedia states that Endor has a diameter of 4,900 km. From the hologram shown during the pre-attack briefing scene in Return of the Jedi, I can estimate the relative sizes of Endor and the Death Star, and their orbital separation (assuming the hologram is to scale) Death Star II Diameter: 343 km Endor Diameter: 4,900 km ‘The Death Star is 7% of the diameter of Endor, making it roughly 343 km across. Also, it appears that the centers of Endor and the Death Star are 2,910 km apart, which puts the Death Star at an altitude of 460 km above the surface of Endor. From these dimension, we can also work out the mass of Endor. The people, Ewoks, and AT-STs all move as if they are on a surface with a gravitational acceleration close to that of Earth, So, for simplicity | assume that the gravitational acceleration at the surface is 1g. There is @ handy formula that can give you the mass of a planet relative to Earth if you know its radius: Mynte = pte Soot Moe ~ RenatePlugging in our the size of Endor and Earth into this equation, and making the gravitational acceleration g the same for both worlds, we find that Endor is about 15% as massive as Earth, which is only slightly higher than Mars. Its diameter is smaller -- Mars has a diameter of 6780 km -- so it must be denser. Using the formula for the volume of a sphere, | estimate that the bulk density of Endor is about 14,350 kg/m®. This is more than iron (8000 kg/m’) and less than uranium (19,100 kg/m’), so while the composition of Endor must be quite unusual, itis not impossible. Let's return to the orbital dynamics problem. In the briefing scene, we see that the Death Star appears to be in a synchronous orbit around Endor. Antigravity technology is widely available to the Star Wars universe, so they could be using massive repulsorfifts to keep the Death Star in place. Let's assume that instead, the Death Star is simply in an Endor-synchronous orbit (a bit like a communication satellite on Earth). At the synchronous orbit, the orbital period is exactly 1 day, The orbital period can be worked out using Kepler's Third Law: P= 2% Where a is the semimajor axis of the orbit (the average separation distance), G is Newton's gravitational constant, and M is the mass of the body (Endor in this case). From this I get an orbital period of the Death Star of a bit more than 1 hour. If the Death Star were in a synchronous orbit, then Endor would also be spinning once every hour. That would make Endor an exceedingly fast rotator. The sun would rise and set every thirty minutes. In fact, a spin this fast would likely be unstable for a planet-sized object. At the very least would not be a spherical body but instead would be an oblong rugby-ball shaped object called a Jacobi ellipsoid (the Dwarf Planet Haumea probably has such a shape, and it has a rotation period of about 4 hours). So | have to assume that the Death Star is being maintained in its position using something like repulsorlifts, which presumably are destroyed along with the station. For simplicity, I'l assume that the length of the day on Endor is 24 hours. Let's consider the issue of the mass of fragments. I've always found the destruction of the second Death Star to be remarkably gentle compared to the first one. After all, the first Death Star exploded instantly after being hit by a couple of proton torpedos. The second one required more precision (Wedge Antilles had to first knock out the power regulator on the north tower before the Millennium Falcon hit the center of the power structure), and took long enough to explode that the rebel pilots could escape from its interior.Therefore | think that there is likely to be little vaporization of material, and little extra velocity imparted on the fragments. Once the Death Star is destroyed, all of the fragments are moving a lot more slowly than the required velocity needed to keep them in orbit, since they are wellbelow the stationary orbital distance. If | assume they were moving once around Endor per day, then their velocity is about 212 m/s about the center of Endor. The orbital velocity at the Death Stars altitude is given by this equation: For the Death Star's altitude, fragments would have to be moving at 4.5 km/s in order to stay in orbit. Because the Death Star fragments are moving a lot more slowly than they ought to be to stay in orbit, then more or less what happens after the destruction is that the entire mass of the Death Star simply falls onto the location of the shield generator. So now | want to estimate the effects of all that Death Star debris falling onto Endor. For that, Ill need the mass of the Death Star. Some students at Lehigh University estimated the cost of the Death Star using ballpark estimates assuming that the amount of steel used in its construction is, about what one would use for building an aircraft carrier. They estimated a density of about 770 kg/m? (which is a bit higher than that of a comet nucleus). This give the Death Star a mass of about 10'° kg. Assuming the fragments begin with the initial velocity of 212 m/s, | can use the vis-viva equation to work out the impact velocity. This is simply an equation for the conservation of energy. It looks like this: Here, ap., is the original orbital distance of the Death Star (2,910 km). Using the above equation, | find that the velocity on impact is about 2.8 km/s. Using my own crater simulation program, | estimate that the impact of a Death Star-mass ball of fragments will leave behind a 700 km diameter crater. This is almost 4 times larger than the Chixculub crater in Mexico that is associated with the dinosaur extinction. The aftermath of this impact would be to obliterate everything on the surface. No Ewok could withstand an impact of that magnitude. Itis likely that the atmosphere would be so heated up by the re-entry of the ejecta thrown out by the excavation of this monstrous crater that every body of water on the entire world would be flash heated to steam, and every forest would ignite into a global firestorm. It would look something like this: https://iwww. youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw