The farthest of all distances is the edge of space which is estimated to be about 45.34 billion light-years away in any direction and increasing (due to expansion). “A logarithmic illustration of the entire universe, starting with the solar system and ending with the cosmic background radiation of the big bang.” Pablo Carlos Budassi/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) Yet, even at that speed, it would take 13,211 years to reach Proxima b. The fastest spacecraft to ever fly was NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. It is about 4.2 light-years away, which is a distance of about 24.7 trillion miles or 39.7 trillion kilometers. The images coming back are received months after they are taken.Įven farther yet is Proxima b which is the closest known exoplanet (outside our solar system). These spacecraft are at the farthest point humanity has ever seen. Likewise, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, each of which has reached the space between stars. It takes months for NASA to get data from spacecraft such as New Horizon, which is now more than 4 billion miles from Earth. The Farther You Go, The Slower The Speed Of Light Seems
So, commands must be carefully thought out, prepackaged, and aimed at the precise location in space at the precise time so that they don’t miss their target. At this shortest distance between Earth and Mars, it takes light 3 minutes 2 seconds to go from one planet to the next.īut on average, Mars is about 158 million miles from Earth - so the average round-trip communication normally takes about 28 minutes and 12 seconds. Even then, it is much too slow to operate a spacecraft in “live mode” (as you would a remote-controlled car for example). When the closest approach happens is when the fastest conversation is possible. This is an event, called the closest approach, which only happens roughly once every two years. On average, that best-case scenario distance is about 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers) when the planets are at their nearest point to one another.
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For example, when NASA tries to talk to, or download data from, a spacecraft (such as the InSight probe on Mars). This animation illustrates the challenge that many planetary scientists deal with on a daily basis. How Fast Light Travels Between Earth And Mars Fascinatingly, this time is growing day by day as the moon drifts farther away from the Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. The moonlight we are seeing at night is about 1.25 seconds old. At this distance, a photon of light takes about 2.5 seconds to do a round trip. On average, there are about 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) between our planet and the moon. How Fast Light Travels Between Earth And The Moon In this scenario, the speed of light seems pretty fast being able to lap the equator almost 7.5 times in one second. Air refracts and slows down light a little bit. This video shows a photon skimming along the surface of Earth at its center (which is 24,901 miles around) if there was no atmosphere to slow it down. When I revised for my exams, I used to draw complex concepts out by hand just to truly understand, so that’s what I’m doing here.” How Fast Light Travels Relative To Earth “My animations were made to show as instantly as possible the whole context of what I’m trying to convey. O’Donoghue told Business Insider via Twitter:
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He recently learned how to create animations and realized that he really enjoyed explaining difficult to grasp space concepts with them. James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, took it upon himself to depict the speed limit of the cosmos in a way that anyone could understand. And you can forget about worlds beyond our solar system because it would take so long to communicate that far that we’d be dead for thousands of years by the time a message is received. It is frustratingly slow when trying to communicate with other planets, even a nearby one, like Mars. That seems incredibly fast, yes, but it is not. It is the fastest known way that any object can travel through space. That’s about 670.6 million mph (1.079 billion kilometers per hour). In a perfectly empty vacuum, a particle of light (which is called a photon) travels at about 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second).
You can really see just how fast (and slow) the speed limit of the universe can be. His clever physics animations show how long it takes light to travel around the Earth, from Earth to the moon, and from Earth to Mars. A scientist at NASA proves that the speed of light is torturously slow through 3 simple animations.
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