The slowest mission to fly to the Moon was actually one of the most advanced technologies to be sent into space. SMART-1 slowly spiraled out from the Earth to arrive at its destination one year, one month and two weeks later on November 11th, SMART-1 may have been slow, but it was by far the most fuel efficient.
The craft used only 82 kg of xenon propellant for the entire mission ending with a lunar impact in The SMART-1 mission is an oddity as it is by far the longest mission to the Moon, the rest of the missions took a matter of days to reach lunar orbit. The mission therefore took five days to cover the distance, using its rocket boosters.
However, it was the first-even unmanned mission to the Moon that was the fastest. This mission was known as the Soviet Luna 1 probe, which completed a flyby of the Moon in This basic, but pioneering probe was launched on January 2nd and flew past the Moon by a few thousand kilometers on January 4th.
The Apollo missions, which were the only manned Lunar mission, were fairly quick in reaching the Moon. Naturally, it was the Apollo 11 mission, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon, that made the greatest headlines.
This mission began on July 16th, , where a Saturn V multi-stage rocket took the astronauts from Kennedy Space Center into orbit. They reached lunar orbit after only 51 hours and 49 minutes in space, arriving on July 19th, After dusting off from the Lunar surface, the Lunar Module spent another 2 days, 22 hours and 56 minutes getting back to Earth.
So in addition to be the first manned mission, Apollo 11 was also the fastest trip to the Moon where astronauts were involved. This mission had a speedy launch, with its Atlas V rocket accelerating it to a a speed of about At this rate, it only took 8 hours and 35 minutes for it to get to the Moon from Earth.
Quite a good start for this probe, which was on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt at the time. Hence, it was probably still accelerating long after it had placed the Moon in its rear view mirror assuming it had one.
On December 5th, , an unmanned test of the Orion capsule took place, officially known as Exploration Flight Test 1. During the course of the flight, EFT-1 reached speeds of up to 8. At this velocity, an Orion mission could conceivably make it to the Moon at an average distance of , km in nearly 12 hours. Obviously, adjustments will have to be made for weight since it will need a crew , and deceleration. So, when space tourism begins mounting sight-seeing tours or missions to the Moon, they will have a few options.
They could offer long cruises, gently gliding to the Moon using ion engines to slowly let the tourists take in the views. Or they could opt for the exhilarating rocket ride of a lifetime, blasting tourists off into space and whipping them back in just a day or two. Hard to say which one people would prefer, but surely there are many who would pay handsomely for the opportunity. We Have written many interesting articles about the Moon here at Universe Today. Podcast audio : Download Duration: — 2.
Podcast video : Download A chemical propulsion system, on the other hand, would do, however, that means adding fuel onboard which increases the mass again, and means a longer period to build up acceleration.
Of necessity, this TLI would result in anything but a free-return trajectory, of course, and breaking to slow for lunar orbital insertion would require just as rough and an even more sustained burn that would begin while while still nearly ten lunar radii distant from the closest passage over the to meridian — and end minutes before Loss of Signal, and in lunar orbit watching, an earthset.
At some point, mankind stopped looking at the Moon as some impossible object in the sky and started to decipher the science behind making the journey there. Since that time, many spacecraft have made the journey successfully to the Moon. In this article, we take a look at how long it took different types of craft to get to the Moon. Each country wanted to be the first to put a man on the lunar surface, and the rivalry spurned an era of space exploration.
Getting to the Moon, though, was no easy task. There are several factors that a spacecraft must overcome to travel roughly , miles , kilometers to even make it there in the first place.
Once safely in space, a spacecraft needs boosters of its own to keep the spaceship headed in the right direction. The United States and the former Soviet Union battled to see who could put an unmanned craft on the Moon first.
Six of these actually landed on the lunar surface. The Apollo program used massive foot meters tall three-staged Saturn V rockets to propel astronauts from Earth out into the confines of space. As each stage emptied its fuel, it was dropped from the spacecraft into the ocean.
Once actually in space, astronauts switched to the Command and Service Module to pilot themselves to the Moon. It took careful calculations from the team at NASA to guide the astronauts to the Moon, as the Moon was hurtling through space at the same time!
A simple miscalculation would leave craft traveling indefinitely into the unknown regions of space. It does depend on a lot of factors including where the Moon is in orbit, the size of the spacecraft and the fuel it uses.
The speediest time was set by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft and it only took eight hours and thirty five minutes to get to the Moon. As space technology advances it's likely we'll be able to cut manned Moon journey times down further. At its furthest point the Moon is around miles km away from Earth.
The closest point is called the 'perigee' and puts the Moon around miles km from us. In other space news, scientists have proposed the existence of a fifth dimension that brings together the cosmic realms of light and dark.
Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover will land on the Red Planet later this month.
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