In the event you desired to go to the moon, how long wouldn’t it take?
Well, the reply is determined by plenty of aspects starting from the positions of Earth and the moon, as to if you ought to land on the surface or simply zip past, and particularly to the technology used to propel you there.
The common travel time to the moon (providing the moon is your intended destination), using current rocket propulsion is roughly three days. The fastest flight to the moon without stopping was achieved by NASA’s Recent Horizons probe when it passed the moon in just 8 hours 35 minutes while en path to Pluto.
Currently, the fastest crewed flight to the moon was Apollo 8. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit just 69 hours and eight minutes after launch in response to NASA.
Here we take a have a look at how long a visit to the moon would take using available technology and explore the travel times of previous missions to our lunar companion.
How far-off is the moon?
To learn how long it takes to get to the moon, we first must know the way far-off it’s.
The common distance between Earth and the moon is about 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers), in response to NASA. But since the moon doesn’t orbit Earth in an ideal circle, its distance from Earth isn’t constant. At its closest point to Earth — often known as perigee — the moon is about 226,000 miles (363,300 km) away and at its farthest — often known as apogee — it’s about 251,000 miles (405,500 km) away.
How long wouldn’t it take to travel to the moon on the speed of sunshine?
Light travels at roughly 186,282 miles per second (299,792 km per second). Due to this fact, a light-weight shining from the moon would take the next period of time to succeed in Earth (or vice versa):
- Closest point: 1.2 seconds
- Farthest point: 1.4 seconds
- Average distance: 1.3 seconds
How long wouldn’t it take to travel to the moon on the fastest spacecraft thus far?
The fastest spacecraft is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which keeps breaking its own speed records because it moves closer to the sun. On Nov. 21, 2021, the Parker Solar Probe clocked a top speed of 101 miles (163 kilometers) per second during its tenth close flyby of our star, which translates to a blistering 364,621 mph (586,000 kph). In keeping with a NASA statement, when the Parker Solar Probe comes inside 4 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface in December 2024, the spacecraft’s speed will top 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 km/h)!
So when you were theoretically in a position to hitch a ride on the Parker Solar Probe and take it on a detour from its sun-focused mission to travel in a straight line from Earth to the moon, traveling on the speeds the probe reaches during its tenth flyby (101 miles per second), the time it could take you to get to the moon could be:
- Closest point: 37.2 hours
- Farthest point: 41.4 hours
- Average distance: 39.4 hours
How long wouldn’t it take to drive to the moon?
For example you made the decision to drive to the moon (and that it was actually possible). At a median distance of 238,855 miles (384,400 km) and driving at a continuing speed of 60 mph (96 km/h), it could take about 166 days.
Calculating travel times to the moon — it is not that easy
An issue with the previous calculations is that they measure the gap between Earth and the moon in a straight line and assume the 2 bodies remain at a continuing distance; that’s, assuming that when a probe is launched from Earth, the moon would remain the identical distance away by the point the probe arrives.
In point of fact, nevertheless, the gap between Earth and the moon isn’t constant because of the moon’s elliptical orbit, so engineers must calculate the best orbits for sending a spacecraft from Earth to the moon. Like throwing a dart at a moving goal from a moving vehicle, they have to calculate where the moon might be when the spacecraft arrives, not where it’s when it leaves Earth.
One other factor engineers must bear in mind when calculating travel times to the moon is whether or not the mission has the intention of landing on the surface or entering lunar orbit. In these cases, traveling there as fast as possible isn’t feasible because the spacecraft needs to reach slowly enough to perform orbit insertion maneuvers.
Moon mission travel times
Greater than 140 missions have been launched to the moon, each with a special objective, route and travel time.
Perhaps probably the most famous — the crewed Apollo 11 mission — took 4 days, six hours and 45 minutes to succeed in the moon. Apollo 10 still holds the record for the fastest speed any humans have ever traveled when it clocked a top speed of while the crew of Apollo 10 traveled 24,791 mph (39,897 kph) relative to Earth as they rocketed back to our planet on May 26, 1969.
The primary uncrewed flight test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and space launch system rocket — Artemis 1 — reached the moon on flight day six of its journey and swooped all the way down to just 80 miles (130 km) above the lunar surface to achieve a gravitational boost to enter a so-called “distant retrograde orbit.”
Additional resources
Read more about how space navigation works with accurate timekeeping with these resources from NASA. Learn more about how before the times of GPS engineers were in a position to navigate from Earth to the moon with such precision with this article by Gwendolyn Vines Gettliffe published on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ‘ask an engineer’ feature.
Bibliography
Hatfield, M. (2021). Space Dust Presents Opportunities, Challenges as Parker Solar Probe Speeds Back toward the Sun – Parker Solar Probe. [online] blogs.nasa.gov. Available at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2021/11/10/space-dust-presents-opportunities-challenges-as-parker-solar-probe-speeds-back-toward-the-sun/.
NASA (2011). Apollo 8. [online] NASA. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo8.html.
www.rmg.co.uk. (n.d.). How many individuals have walked on the Moon? [online] Available at: https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/how-many-people-have-walked-on-moon.