How long does the NASA take to travel the galaxy?

Answer 1

How fast are you going?

The Voyager probes started out pretty near the center and are just now, almost 40 years later, reaching what we think might be the boundary of the solar system. So, travelling at the fastest speed we've ever been able to send a probe away from the Sun, 80-90 years to cross it sounds about right.

Answer 2

For the purposes of this answer, how far out do you want to go? The distance from the Sun to Pluto is about 5.5 light-hours, so from one side to another would be 11 light-hours. The Oort cloud, the theorized distant repository of proto-comets, is believed to be about 5 light MONTHS away, so the distance "across the solar system" would be about 10 light-months.

Answer 3

The Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and 1000 light years thick at its widest points.

The fasted probe launched by NASA was Helios 2B launched in 1976. It reached a top speed of 252,792 km/h.

It would take Helios 2B 4.27 million years to move from top to bottom of the galaxy and 427 million years to move from one side to another.

Answer 4

We don't know; we have never done it. Yet. The space probes that are farthest from Earth are the two Voyager probes.

Travel to another solar system - there are a few possibilities within 10 light years - at Voyager's current speed of 17 kilometers per second would take 175,000 years.

However, even spacecraft developed with current technology should be able to cut this time to 1000 years or less. A spacecraft with a nuclear Orion-type drive (see link) might be able to cut it to only a few hundred years.

Intergalactic travel remains unattainable for the foreseeable future.

Answer 5

It would depend on the speed of your spacecraft. Men have never been further away than the Moon, and we no longer have any spacecraft that could go even that far. With the planned retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet in 2012, there will be no American spacecraft AT ALL.

If it were critically important, it MIGHT be possible for NASA to manage to construct a spacecraft capable of going back to the Moon within 5 years, or to Mars by 2020.

But at present, there are no plans to build any sort of manned spacecraft.