Moon is the natural satellite of the earth, visible by reflected light of the sun at night. It’s an astronomical body that orbits planet earth and is the fifth largest natural satellite in the solar system but how long does it take to get the moon?
There are several paths to the moon but the distance travelled depends on the perigee and the apogee of moon whereas ittake about 3 days to travel to the moon in a spacecraft. A distance of 240,000 miles i.e. 386,400 kilometers which is the total distance from the earth to the moon.
Human and machines have made it possible to reach the moon, many countries launched their spacecraft’s to calculate How Long Does It Take To Get To The Moon in fuel efficient and cost effective method. Different manned and unmanned missions projected different time consumption.
Let’s takearideto moon and find out the slowest and the fastest flights to Earths’ natural satellite
SMART-1: it is known as the slowest and the longest mission as it took one month and two weeks of time to reach moon, it was the most advanced technology sent,the lunar probewaslaunchedon27th September 2003 and reached on11th November 2004 SMART – 1 slowly thrived from the earth to reach its destination though it is counted as the most slow mission but it was the most fuel efficient as the craft used only 82 kg of xenon to boost the ion engine.
CHANG’E-1: China launched its mission from Xichang satellite Launch Center on October 24th 2007. The space craft from China sat in earth’s orbit till 31st October and began it journey and landed at lunar orbit on November 5th, it took 5days to cover the distance from the earth to moon.
CHANG’E-2: China launched another mission to moon on 1st October 2010 and the orbiter reached lunar orbit in 4 days and 16 hours.
MANNED MISSIONS
APOLLO 11: it was the first manned mission which made out the headlines and created history. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrinbecamethefirst men to walk on the surface of the moon. On July 16th 1969 Saturn V multi stage rocket took the Astronauts from Kennedy Space Center into lunar orbit and they reached in 51hours and 49 minutes only on 19 the July 1969 and that’s how the small foot stepped first time on the chest of moon. Apollo 11madeit clear how long does it take to the moon with the Astronauts.
Walk to the moon never ended since then severalmannedmissions were launched one after the other.
NASA’s Pluto mission took 8 hours and35 minutes to get to the moon from Earth.
NASA and otherorganizations send robots to explore moon as they are cost efficient, can stay on moon for longer time, collectlarge amount of information, transmits data and survives on moon without food and water.