Unlike airplanes, spaceships zipping through the void of space aren’t slowed by friction from the atmosphere around them. Using rocket propulsion and the gravity of the sun and planets to sling them across the solar system, our fastest space probes can reach speeds of 150,000 miles an hour (241,000 kph). That might sound fast, but it’s only the tiniest fraction of the speed of light and much too slow for travel beyond the planets in our solar system. The first manned fights to Mars will take at least six months. A modern spaceship would take tens of thousands of years to reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system.
Picture Credit : Google
