• Question: How long does it take to get to the moon

    Asked by tkhan to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 19 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Shane Bergin

      Shane Bergin answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      that depends on how fast you go and what route you take.

      The moon is 384,400 km away from the Earth (on average). It took Neil Armstrong and crew 3 days and 3 hours to get there.

      Since then NASA have sent unmanned missions to the moon in times as short as 8 hours!

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      Its amazing how much more quickly we’re able to get to the moon now.

      This question made me wonder…how long would it take to WALK to the moon?

      Well, if its 384,000km away. And we can walk about 5km an hour.
      384,000/5 = 76,800 hours
      76,800/24 hours in a day = 3,200 days
      3,200 days/365 days in a year = 8.7 years

      So it would take 8.7 years of non-stop walking to get to the moon! But of course we’d need breaks for tea and snacks…but I like to think about it!

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      light from the sun that reflects off the moon and down to earth so that we can see it in the night sky takes about 1.2 seconds to get from the moon to us here.

    • Photo: Aggelos Zacharopoulos

      Aggelos Zacharopoulos answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      @tkhan,
      it is 384,000 km from the earth to the moon but in order to leave the earth and approach the moon safely a spacecraft would not travel on a straight line. As Shane says above Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 mission took 3 days and 3 hours to get to the moon. Later missions were much faster. It all depends on the flight plan of each mission.

      A beam of light on the other hand would only need just above 1.25 secs to travel the distance!

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