Whether a mission uses a rocket to blast its way there, or a subtle ion engine to slowly edge its payload closer, we have many options open to us when we travel to the Moon in the future. 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. The Luna 2 was made by the Soviet Union, and it reached the Moon in The Luna 2 took a direct path to the Moon, and the journey took approximately 34 hours.
The longest mission to the Moon was also a relatively recent one; it was slow not because it was an old ship, but because it was extremely fuel and energy efficient. The first successful manned trip to the Moon was the Apollo 11, which blasted off from Earth on July 16, They walked on the Moon for a few hours, and conducted some experiments. It takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes for our Moon to complete one full orbit around Earth. However, it takes our Moon about This is called the synodic month.
The difference between the sidereal and synodic months occurs because as our Moon moves around Earth, the Earth also moves around our Sun. Our Moon must travel a little farther in its path to make up for the added distance and complete the phase cycle. What is the dark side of the Moon? In spite of the phrase, there actually is no dark side of the Moon! Just like Earth, our Moon rotates on its own axis and experiences daylight and dark cycles.
Our Moon's day and night cycles are a little longer than Earth's — the Moon spins on its axis once every Our Moon's period of rotation matches the time of revolution around Earth. In other words, it takes our Moon the same length of time to turn once on its axis as it takes it to go once completely around the Earth!
Do other planets have moons? Several of the planets in our solar system have natural satellites that orbit them. 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.
And, four Supermoons will be gracing the night sky in We pay for your stories!
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