We can't directly measure space travel speeds in light-years. A light-year is a unit of distance, not speed. It's the distance light travels in one year.
To understand this better, let's consider these points:
- Light travels incredibly fast: Light travels at approximately 299,792 kilometers per second (186,282 miles per second).
- Light-year is a vast distance: A light-year is about 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).
- Spacecraft speeds are much slower: Even our fastest spacecraft, like the Voyager probes, travel at a fraction of the speed of light.
Therefore, we measure spacecraft speeds in units like kilometers per second or miles per hour.
Here's an example:
- The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is the farthest man-made object from Earth, travels at about 17 kilometers per second (10.5 miles per second).
To put this in perspective, it would take Voyager 1 approximately 73,000 years to travel one light-year.
While we can't travel at the speed of light, ongoing research and technological advancements might one day make interstellar travel a reality.
