How Far have we Travelled in Space?
From the time when Earth was believed to be the center of the universe to the moment when we stepped onto the surface of the Moon, we have come a long way. So, what’s limiting us from going beyond?
Getting launched into Space was just the beginning of our Space Exploration program. We are in the stage of developing High-Speed Jet-Propulsion vehicles that when traveling can be near the speed of Light.
So how far we have traveled in Space?
On April 12, 1961, we laid a milestone in the history of space exploration by launching the First Human into Space. YURI GAGARIN, the Soviet Union Pilot and Cosmonaut, become the first person to travel into outer space.
Being the First Space Journey of mankind, it was a 108-minute voyage beyond the reach of Earth. The Spacecraft in which Yuri Gagarin made the Journey, the Vostok-1, circled the Earth once, reaching a height of 327 kilometers above sea level.
Following Yuri Gagarin, is a long list of astronomers who went into space to date, but the farthest journey mankind has ever made ends over the Moon. There are a number of challenges that are limiting us to go beyond, but those challenges are not much applicable to artificial objects. It is the reason we are successful in sending one such object far beyond the edge of the solar system.
We recently made a groundbreaking achievement by confirming VOYAGER-1 to be the first-ever man-made object to leave the solar system and enter into INTERSTELLAR SPACE!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It means we have our object voyaging into the dark space between Stars, the region that begins at the end of the Solar Magnetic flux of our Solar System.
Putting Man on to the surface of the Moon was a journey way ahead in terms of distance especially when it is compared with the Journey made by Yuri Gagarin. It was altogether 384,000 Kilometers of the voyage between the Earth and the Moon. But was it the furthest space travel ever done by mankind?
Absolutely not! On April 1970 NASA’S APOLLO 13 crew swung around the dark, far side of the Moon at an altitude of 254 Kilometers, putting them roughly 400,000 Kilometers away from the rest of humanity on Earth.
Now it’s nearly half a century since the crew of Apollo 13 made the farthest ever Space travel from Earth, and since then no human has gone beyond it.
However, in the coming decade, we can expect to see Man landing over the Red soil of Mars as we are actively working on the Colonization of Mars.
A Manned Mission to Mars if achieved will break all of our previous records of Space traveling as even just the nearest distance of Mars from Earth is 52 Million Kilometers with an average distance of near about 200 Million Kilometers. That’s just going to be 200 times more than the distance between Earth and the Moon.
