well newton's though experiment, as recorded, was based on the cannon...such details are trivial anyway...yeh newton did say it was impossible, though didnt stop jules verne writing a book about it...
for dot pts like these, you'll need to relate to many other ones. so here (along with several other pts in this section) , you'll need to understand how F=GMm/r^2 is used in working out all the characteristics of the motion of satellites, not just the relation between force, mass and distance as the eqn explicitly states, i think.
and yeah so i reckon u need to talk about more than what newton actually did, but also the implications of what he did, things like equating with centripetal force; substitution to get angular velocities etc, which are also under a couple of other dot pts