How
long does it take to go to the moon, How Long Does it Take to get to the Moon,
how long it takes to travel to the moon
Summary
– If
you choose to go by the rickety old car, we might never get there but let's see
how fast satellites, probes and Apollo missions took to reach the moon.
ESA
Smart I lunar probe: 1 year, 1 month, 2 weeks. 82Kg of xenon fuel burn September
27th, 2004, Nov 11th, 2004
Manned
missions: 3 days at best: July 16th – July 19th, 1969
Soviet
Luna fast probe sent. First ever too. 36 hours.
New
Horizons to Pluto: 8 hours, 35 minutes to flyby.
If
there was ever a highway to the Moon, and if we could probably ride cars on
this highway, do you know how long it would take to reach the moon?
Let's
do some math first.
The
moon is at an average distance of 380,000 km from Earth. Let's say we are
riding on this imaginary highway to our moon at an average speed of 120 km/h.
Calculations tell me that we'd be there in just 3166+ hours. Well, not bad
isn't it?
That's
just over 131 days. A little over one-third of an year.
Too
bad we can't actually ride at a constant speed of 120 km/h – or perhaps I must
add: all that imagination is just too far-fetched.
So
let's take a real situation: how long does it take to get to the moon in a
shuttle?
Human
Missions to Moon
All
those wonderful Apollo missions that carried men to Moon had to be somewhat
fast. You can't risk spending too much time in outer space on a totally alien
environment right?
So,
all those Apollo missions happened to be somewhat fast. The Apollo 11 that was
launched in July 16th, 1969 actually reached lunar orbit on July 19th, 1969
doing an impressive 3-day journey.
Still,
not the fastest.
That
wasn't the fastest mission though.
The
first lunar probe to be launched was from Soviet Union. The probe, called Luna
I, zipped past moon within 36 hours of being launched from Earth.
That's about a day and a half.
A
NASA mission, New Horizons, which was actually headed to Pluto, was made
to cruise at incredible speeds of 58,000 km/h. The mission took the probe very
close to the moon in: can you guess it? Let's do some math again:
Distance:
380,000 km.
Speed:
58,000 km/hr.
Dividing
both for time, we get 6 hours.
Well,
the speed was variant in the initial stages so the probe ended up flying by the
moon in less than 8 hours and 35 minutes.
Of
course, none of these had to land on the moon.
Slow.
Slower. Slowest.
Talking
about the slowest mission till date, we have ESA SMART I mission which used the
lowest amount of fuel to reach moon. It burnt just 82 kg of Xenon fuel in an
ion injection fuel jet.. and quite naturally was the slowest to reach moon.
The
time the SMART I mission took was 1 year, 1 month and 2 weeks. Launched in
September 27th, 2003, the probe reached lunar orbit on November 11th, 2004.
So
I guess you now have your answer. If someone asks you, how long it takes to
go to the moon; you better use the car-highway example!
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